Traveling to Juarez from El Paso

Traveling to Juarez from El Paso

Hi, welcome to Living in El Paso, Texas. My name is John Peña. I'm a real estate agent here and in this episode we're going to talk about traveling to and from Juarez from El Paso.

All right, so this week me and Alex decided to go on a little trip to Juarez so we can kind of show you guys what it's like to live near the border and so you can kind of get an idea of what it's like to be so close to another country like Mexico. So there are six different ports of entry between Mexico and United States through El

Paso. We decided to go through the Bridge of Americas. This is a toll-free bridge. You can go in and out of it without paying any fees, usually in the mornings or afternoons

and people are either coming from work or going to work or from school and stuff like that. That's generally when you'll see more of a backed up situation on the border entries. We also decided to go through the pedestrian crossing in Paseo del Norte, which I believe

is one of the more popular crossings since as soon as you cross the border you can see all the businesses and all the different local vendors. So I feel like it's a little bit more popular there. So we decided to walk through there.

We did get charged about 50 cents per person to walk in. Sometimes you might see the Mexican side, there's some soldiers or immigration officers that they might check your purse and stuff like that, but regarding paperwork they're pretty easy to let you go through.

Now on the way back it's a lot more strict, but like I said as long as you got all your paperwork in line then you should be fine. In order to go to Mexico you don't really need any type of documentation besides your driver's license.

If you have a passport obviously they might recommend you to take that. I don't know if I would recommend you to walk around in Mars with your passport. So I think just with your regular driver's license or ID you should be fine. If you are a resident make sure you take your write paperwork to return.

Make sure you take your green card. If you have a certificate of naturalization bring that. And even with just your ID they might give you a hard time, but they'll definitely let you through as long as you got all your paperwork right.

So as you can see here I went to one of those places where you can exchange currency from American dollars to the Mexican Peso. And right now of course as you can tell the Mexican Peso is a little bit lower in value than it is the dollar, so typically you will see a lot of Americans or just other Mexicans

that live in America at this moment coming over to the Mexico side just get like groceries or shop around for anything that they might need just because on this side it would be a little bit more affordable because of that exchange rate and the U.S. dollar being so strong here.

Even if you don't find one of these exchange places most stores or local sellers will take dollars still and it's also the same on the other side. If you come to the El Paso side a lot of stores around the bridge will also accept Pesos because they know that typically that is what's going to be found.

As you can see right across the border there's plenty of businesses like pharmacies and doctors as well because many Americans will cross the border in order to get treatment. Since it's a lot cheaper just to cross the border and it's pretty much the same quality of care many Americans decide to cross the border and get their services done there.

Like Miguel mentioned you can also pay with dollars if you prefer you don't have to change the money so pretty much anybody that works in that side of the border will accept dollars as well. So as you can see to the right this is the Chamisal National Park and the Chamisal National

Park actually exists kind of both on the U.S. side and the Mexico side. There is a Chamisal Park on Juarez. Both parks are very beautiful as you can see by the footage here. Usually you'll see a lot of events here or people just kind of taking pictures because

it is such a scenic area. I have also taken advantage of the affordability of medical procedures just across the border. I had an issue with one of my pets he actually had a tumor and they gave me a price estimate here in the U.S. about $4,000 for everything included.

I went across the border which is probably 15 minutes away from my house in El Paso. I went to the vet a very good quality vet that people recommend me and I only ended up paying about $900 for everything included and it's a relatively expensive vet there in Juarez.

So I definitely recommend you guys to have that in consideration if you ever need any type of medical care or any type of vet care I definitely recommend you to at least do some research and see if Juarez is something that you're interested in. So we decided to stop by the markets here in Juarez which are a little bit different

from the markets that you would tend to see in the El Paso side. Here there is a lot more I would say handcrafted materials, handcrafted crafts that you'll find and they're a lot more affordable than of course over there on the El Paso side. Typically the best times to be here are the weekends after nine to you know in the afternoon

it gets pretty packed. You'll see a lot of things and hopefully be able to check out a lot of good food and snacks that are typically sold by street vendors that you'll find everywhere. As we were walking by we noticed that there was a taco place, the smell itself incentivized

us to go check it out and it's a very nice place totally different that you would see at a typical restaurant. It looks like it was a house before and they converted it into a restaurant which I think it was a pretty cool idea and I really like that they had a little side area where you

can put your own salsas, they have many different types of salsas that you can put and I really like that they have that feature because I always like to put a lot of different toppings on my tacos. We also decided to stop by at Kentucky Bar which is one of the more popular bars in this

area. It is very close to the Paseo del Norte entry so it would make sense that we do get a lot of tourists in this bar specifically. The food is great, we ordered some nachos and a few drinks and we just had a really

good time. They had plenty of music playing the whole time and the venue was just a very beautiful looking place so we enjoyed the time that we spent there. The Paseo del Norte bridge might also be a very popular bridge for just its cinematic

views. As you can see here on the Juarez side there's plenty of beautiful lights covering the street leading up to the port of entry and on the El Paso side you see the same thing when you're leaving the port of entry.

Feels like you're safe and it feels very inviting to see the similarities between El Paso and Juarez. I've lived in El Paso most of my life and I have for the most part always taken advantage of the fact that we live so close to another great country.

I am Hispanic after all so I do like to explore my culture and there's no better way to do that than to just cross the border and check out some of the stuff that Mexico has to offer and I do encourage you guys to do the same. Juarez has a kind of serious reputation around here but a lot of that is you know drawn to

myths and stuff. Take everything with a grain of salt that you hear about Juarez but as you can see we went and we had a wonderful time and nothing bad happened to us and I expect the same thing for all of you guys.

Be smart about it. Don't be, yeah for sure. You know like anywhere else like don't go with your fancy Rolex walking around on the street because that's not that's going to be an issue regardless but if you're smart

about it you just take your paperwork like I said don't take a passport just in case then it's fine.