Driving Central Mexico - Day 2 - Austin to Guadalajara

Leaving Monterrey in our rear view mirror we head towards Saltillo, a city of seven hundred thousand, founded by the Spanish in 1577, but we turn south before we reach it. We are now headed into central Mexico and we didn't know it at the time but we were about to peel back the veil of the 21st century. We were about to drop into a landscape where Biblical time, the early 20th century and the modern world exist side by side.

Like ancient travelers in the Holy Land we start to see shepherds. We see goat herders and sheep herders along the highway tending their flocks. Horses and cattle too. Farmers & families pound stakes into the ground along the highway and tie-off their animals for the day. There are no grounds crews along the highways here. No need. The livestock keep everything cropped and pruned. Sadly we twice saw horses, tongues splayed, twisted and lifeless laying along the edge of the road. They must have become untethered or wandered too close to the road when a lumbering truck raged by. This grazing arrangement seems dangerous for the animals and the drivers. I wonder to myself about it but people here live a subsistence lifestyle. They can't afford for the progress of a road to take their grazing lands. I was told the land belongs to the people not the government and they have the right to graze their animals wherever they want.

Ramshackle villages of painted adobe buildings huddle along the road. Most family homes are fronted by Cantina's where they make a modest living as purveyor's of food and drink. Wood fire cookers are permanently set up out front with chicken's grilling and smoke wafting into the highway luring travelers and truckers in by their noses. The buildings are all colorfully painted. 99% of the Cantina's are building sized Corona advertisements that make me thirsty.


















My intestinal scare in Nuevo Laredo and cautions about not eating road food keep us from stopping - that and the thought of dealing with a rural population who probably doesn't know a word of English. I looked longingly as we passed popular Cantinas with men grouped by the doors and sitting out front. How cool would it be to stop for a beer in an authentic Mexican Cantina... And then I thought of all the stupid Western's I've seen. Cantinas ...banditos, ...si, Cantinas, banditos .... we were in the middle of nowhere, I kept my foot on the gas.

Outside of these roadside settlements even more disheveled hovels of mud or plywood & corrugated tin structures sprouted on the parched landscape, solo or huddled in little groupings.





















During one stretch we passed a squatter group of snake hunters living in these plywood & tin homes who proudly displayed snake skins for sale at stands along the side of the road.
























Here's a video of us.





It was hot and dry and white here. I peeked over at the temperature gage on the trusty Subaru. It looked fine. I didn't want to break down here. How would we ever get help? I started to notice every mile the government had placed blue water barrels and emergency telephones. This desolate place must have taken a few lives in the past and shriveled them up to merge with the bone white landscape.

Thankfully, even in the middle of nowhere the clean and modern circa1970's Hess style PemEx stations were available. On the toll road we'd see one every hour or so.































We do the usual, stop, have the uniformed attendants pump our gas and use the restroom. This time we need to buy our toilet paper from a pretty little Senorita out front. 2 Pesos for a fist full. What if I need more? I don't want to come back out. Do I buy it now? Are Mexicans crinklers or folder's? 2 Peso's worth of paper turns out to be enough. Still afraid to eat and get sick we buy packaged foods. Granola bars, cookies and bottled water. We switch drivers and mount the road once more.

Back on the highway we still get excited every time we see the exotic shepherds and their herds. These are picturesque men weathered by the sun with their big staffs, over-sized white cowboy hats, western shirts and rugged blue-jeans. Sometime they are on horses but most of the time they are on foot walking or leaning on their staffs - their horse tied off to some fence or post or tree in the distance.

It feels odd to be on the modern highway, traveling at 75 miles per hour, passing through timeless towns of dirt, gravel roads and dusty buildings. In the car we're separate, we're removed from the dust & heat, the toil and the poverty. If this road hadn't bisected these towns they would be completely removed from the modern world. Other than this ribbon of road we're on there is no other concrete or asphalt or pavers in sight. The buildings don't front up to sidewalks and they are open to the air with no doors or window glass. I try to shoot video out the window but I feel bad like I'm gawking .... because I am kinda gawking, my mouth and eyes wide in wonderment. I feel like a visitor at a zoo. I stop shooting.


When we get down close to San Luis Potosi, a city of two and a half million people, we stop again at another PemEx. We are immediately swarmed by little kids who want to clean our windows. Feeling harassed after 10 hours on the road and agitated after being consistently swarmed by people with their hands out every time we stop Dorothy shoos them away. They are heart broken. I see their little shoulders slump and their heads fall forward as they walk away, eyes towards the ground, kicking rocks. But they circle around and hover nearby. They come around behind the car and look at me with their sparkling dark brown eyes and dirty faces. I dig into my pocket and give them some coinage. Their smiles could have lit that whole little town up that night. I shoo them off. No need to clean the windows. They go jubilantly skipping back to their father who was standing with some friends. They show off their booty and shyly look at me. I smile back.

Off to my left are two food vendors in semi-permanent wooden stalls. One is a Smoothie shack and the other a fruit vendor. The fruit is displayed in beautifully cascading arrangements and the colors sing, vibrant as neon. All we've eaten all day is packaged food. We've passed by Cantinas with chicken and lamb cooking on grills and cold beer while my stomach quenched and now twenty feet in from of me is real live fresh food. I give in to my Mexican food fears and walk towards the fruit stand. The fruit glistens in the sun. It's dripping and sweating in it's own sweet juices. I start to salivate. Oh this is going to taste soooo good. Maybe I'll have them make me a smoothie. A couple steps further and I see them - hundreds of flies swarming like dust mites in the sunlight. Oh man! Oh ...Damn! ....I turn around and go back to my packaged granola bar & bottled water.

We find food satisfaction further down the road however. As we skirt the perimeter of San Luis Potosi we spy a modern plaza with coffee & food shops. I spy a Subway sandwich shop. I'm so there. Fresh bread, meat & veg! We stumble a little trying to order and a couple of nice guys who speak English help us out. While we eat outdoors I speak with another young guy who spies our Florida license plates and yells "Welcome to Mexico!" Turns out he lived ten years in South Carolina. He says he loves to speak English but doesn't get much of a chance anymore. Sometimes he goes down to a town called San Miguel De Allende, where there are a lot of "white boys", to speak. I guess I'm a "white boy". They all ask us what we think of Mexico? What we think of the roads? They are surprised when we tell them the roads have been good.

And with all those good roads behind us we make the optimistic decision to not stop for the night but to continue all the way to Lake Chapala - our final destination. We thought we could be there in three hours. This was at 4:30. We wouldn't roll into Dorothy's new house until 11:30, seven dark hours later!

Next, San Luis Potosi to Lake Chapala.

To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

Driving Northern Mexico - more Day 2 - Austin to Guadalajara

Free from Immigration in Nuevo Laredo with all the right papers and our vehicle permit proudly displayed on the windshield behind the rear view mirror we follow our directions to the famed Toll Road. Mexico has been intently improving it's roadways and now has a fairly good road system throughout parts of the country. We'd be able to travel 75% of our trip on these tolls roads. They are smooth, four lanes wide and very much like highways in U.S.

Well ....the road signs say we're on the toll road but alas, we're on a two lane road - and we haven't seen any tolls. Are we lost already? I think not. We're heading in the right direction and I'm confident we'll hit the toll booth eventually - and importantly, the road is in good condition.

The U.S. shadows our left shoulder for a short time along the Rio Grande before we plunge south to the heart of Mexico. The landscape still looks like the southern Texas lowlands but we are definitely and immediately in Mexico. A lot of the roads off the main highway are now gravel & dirt. Plain painted adobe style roadside shops and restaurants open to the elements with no doors and windows, worn by usage and baked by the sun populate the road every few miles. Mechanics and employees work in the outdoors and stare as we cruise past.

Finally we get to a red light/green light toll that's another inland immigration check. We're a little nervous not knowing what to expect but we get a green light and are waved through. We drove through three Federales (Mexican Federal Police) roadblocks on the trip too - every time wondering what would happen. Each time they just looked as us, yelled something and waved us touristas on through.

As the miles slip by the landscape reminds me of eastern Colorado and Wyoming and then New Mexico but all reference fades away when we see these tress that look like cactuses with palm trees on top. They dot the enormous landscape in front of us and we begin to see the Sierra Madre mountain range rise in the distance.


































Further south as we get nearer to Monterrey we enter the first of an endless string of enormous valleys that we are destined to drive through. There must be various micro-climates through out central Mexico because some were green and some were arid but all were inexpressibly large and beautiful - awe inspiring.























As we approach Monterrey it's time to stop and gas up. We can see the city of 3.8 million people to the south nestled up against the Sierra Madre. We pull into a PemEx gas station (a state owned monopoly). I'm driving at this point. At every filling pump there is a guy in a sharp looking uniform whipping his arms beckoning me to come to their pump like a matador trying to lure a bull to their cape. Having become used to self-serve I freeze for a moment looking at eight guys hustling and performing for my business... I choose a pump and pull in. I get out and not understanding a word of what the pump man is asking I say "fill it up". He nods. Another young kid in uniform runs over and starts to clean the windows. Everything is going smoothly. With the fill up done I ask in English, using as much international sign language and gesturing as I can muster, "do I pay here or do I go inside". The guy says "you pay me". Hmmm. Why don't I believe him - I haven't paid a gasoline attendant personally since the 70's! I look around. I don't see any cash registers or credit card swipers and I remember we were told to bring cash because gas stations don't accept credit cards. I warily pull out my money and peel off 100 Pesos, or whatever it cost, and didn't the attendant pull out a fat roll of cash from his uniform shirt pocket just like an attendant at a Mobil or Esso gas station back in the 60's or 70's! He gives me my change. I give him a tip - I think you're supposed to tip everybody. Anyway I give him a tip. These are full grown family men trying to earn a decent living. They are not owners, they are not mechanics, they do not run the store inside. Their only job is to pump the gas. I try to tell him to tip the window washer kid. I'm not sure he got that concept.

My mind starts time slicing. It's 2009 but it also feels like the 60's when I was a kid or the early 20th century - I'd flash on thoughts or memories of the U.S. as it used to be in simpler times, in slower times and sometimes in less safety conscious times over and over again as the trip progressed.

Before we hit the road again we pop into the store/diner that's a part of this PemEx complex. It's modern. It could be a diner/convenient store combo anywhere in the U.S. and the bathrooms even had a toilet seat and toilet paper!

We hit the highway again and skirt around Monterrey to the north going through it's industrial hinterlands and threading cool canyons.

We are now pointed west heading into central Mexico.




To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

Nuevo Laredo - Crossing the Border into Mexico - Austin to Guadalajara - Day Two

We stayed overnight on the north shore of the Rio Grande in Laredo Texas. I could have thrown a stone into Mexico. Laredo is a city of over 200k residents. The cross border Laredo & Nuevo Lardeo metropolitan area is +700k residents but where we were it had a small town feel, a quiet dark border town feel. When we arrived there was a lot of foot traffic headed back across the border for the night. We went for a little walk. We were told it was safe and we didn't encounter any trouble, although it felt edgy as we walked away from the hotel and the river along unlit, poor & relatively deserted streets.

The town is Mexican in character. It was a part of the Spanish Colonial empire and Mexico at one point - as was all of Texas and the western U.S. It was also the capital of The Republic of the Rio Grande for 238 days.

Our hotel, La Posada, was posh.
















It sat on Plaza San Agustin and had two beautiful restaurants full of affluent travelers.

















Dorothy was spoiling me before we crossed into Mexico. We had an amazing dinner that included an array of Mexican sauces, spices & cheese smothering lamb, duck & chicken.

Across the Rio Grande was Nuevo Laredo, a town now famous for the Mexican drug wars, violent murders and kidnappings. We were headed there in the AM. I couldn't help being a little apprehensive.

We were up at 6:00 AM to beat the traffic and entered Mexico on International Bridge # 2. It was still dark out. On the Mexican side of the bridge we were dumped into Neuvo Laredo. I was thinking we'd go right onto a Mexican highway but no, we were dumped into the frayed edges of town...and a poor part of town at that. We were not in Kansas anymore.

There were vehicles pulled over at a Declaration Station. It was small steel structure like a gas station canopy.

I asked Dorothy "do we need to stop?"
"I don't think so" she said.
There were pick-up trucks loaded to the gills being searched and Mexican army personnel in camouflage uniforms and machine guns looking over the scene.











Photo by Guillermo Batres Reuters El Manana De Nuevo Lared

We drove slowly by ... confused. We'd heard of a second "border" about 30 miles into the country where people without the right papers are turned around and sent back. We didn't want that.

Dorothy's car was packed to the gills too so we asked he next person we saw if we were supposed to declare anything.

Whoosh!

We were surrounded by three Mexican guys speaking rapid fire Spanish and motioning us to follow them. We slowly drove half a block and they directed us into an empty parking lot surrounded by the back alleys of buildings still silhouetted and gray in the early morning darkness. We suddenly felt very isolated. Soon we were surrounded by up to six guys all peering in the windows at us. They had lanyards with badge holders but there were no badges in them. They told us they were working with the immigration officials but we started to feel caged. We couldn't understand them and quickly concluded we were being hustled.

"No-one told me I had to declare anything" Dorothy said to me.
"I think we should get outta here"
I agreed.
She put the car in reverse and started backing out.
"We're leaving" she said "Gracias but I think we're fine" she said rolling up the windows while the hombres pulled their heads and fingers out of the way.
"OK just gimme 100 Peso" one of the guys said and held Dorothy's window.
She stepped on the gas!
"Watch it" I said looking out the back window. There were guys surrounding the car. The last thing we needed to do was run someone over.
We inched out of the lot and the guy who asked for the Pesos became consoling, "OK, ok" he said in Spanglish "just go up two blocks and take a left and you'll get to the immigration center.

I looked up the street. This was not a neighborhood I wanted to go into ... especially in the dark with not a lot of people around. All I could think of was they were sending us into a trap.

I quickly looked at the directions Dorothy had meticulously put together. They said the same thing - go over the bridge into town and take the second left.

"The directions agree with what he's telling us" I said. "Go"!

We drove up to the corner and as we made our turn a guy stepped out in front of the car. Dorothy hit the breaks to stop from hitting him. He leaned over the hood and started to clean the windshield. Crap. Dorothy quickly pulled out some Pesos she had gotten prior to the trip and held a coin out the window. The guy came over to grab it. When he did, we took off.

We rambled down a poor dilapidated residential street with roaming dogs and chickens hoping and praying we were going the right way....drug wars, kidnapping and killing on our minds - but unspoken.
















Photo by Ramone Pavia on Flikr


At the end of the street - in what seemed a long way - we were dumped at a divided highway. Yay! There's a sign that says Immigration. We take a left but see two choices of roads to take. They head in the same direction but are divided by a concrete barrier. Shite. We choose the road on our left.

We chose wrong.
We end up on the bridge back to the U.S.
We tell the Mexican immigration official that we're trying to get INTO Mexico not out. Incredibly he helps us back out of the immigration toll booth (this would've never happened at a U.S. immigration booth) and tells us to make a u-turn and go back the way we came - then take the road on the far right - the road we opted not to take. We turn around and find we are barricaded in the toll plaza. Again, incredibly, the custom's official runs down and moves the barricades for us.

We're free - but guess what? We have to take a right turn back into the neighborhood we just drove through to get back down to the entry for the immigration entrance.
















Photo by RNRobert's on Flickr


It's starting to get light as we enter the neighborhood again and Dorothy is driving way too fast now. We're a bit on edge.
"Easy, slow down" I say. "We're cool."
As soon as I say that a guy with no legs in a wheelchair is trying to maneuver his way in front of us and just past him another young hombre is looking to wash our windshield or sell us a newspaper. Dorothy swerves around these potential "traps" (because as we just learned, if you stop or slow down you are swarmed with people looking for money) and roaming dogs like Dale Earnhardt and after running the Mexican gauntlet for the second time we pop out onto the highway again and take the correct turn down to the Immigration Center.

We pull into a fenced in parking lot that's fairly empty - which is why we decided to cross early in the morning. The building is a plain concrete block building.

















We enter, there are no lines. We start to fill out the papers for 180 day Visas and my intestines start to gurgle, then rumble. It grows more intense. I try to ignore it but the train has left the station. What did we eat last night? Could I have gotten Montezuma's revenge in Laredo? In the U.S. for Pete's sake?! The trip hasn't even started!

I drop my pencil. "I gotta go" I tell Dorothy and I take off.
I find the bathroom and much to my dismay there is no toilet seat and even worse - far worse - is there is no toilet paper!
Oh my God.
What am I going to do?
God answers as a young women comes out of an adjoining stall. She's the cleaning women. She looks at me and reads the panic on my face. She holds a finger up and leaves the bathroom. She comes back with a fifteen inch roll of toilet paper. I'm elated. I take the whole roll and enter the stall. I paper the seat and do my business.

In Mexico a lot of public bathrooms don't have toilet seats or toilet paper.
The seat you learn to live without, the paper you generally buy from a toilet paper entrepreneur who stands outside the bathroom.

Relieved and feeling better I open the stall door to see a line of somber faced Mexicans staring at me.
If looks could kill.
They point at the toilet paper I'm holding and then over to the wall.
I see a giant toilet paper holder flipped open and empty.
Oops, this fifteen inch roll is public toilet paper.
You're supposed to come in, take some toilet paper and do your business.
I had the whole roll!
I sheepishly turned and pointed to the cleaning women. "She gave it to me. Sorry" I said in English, handing it over.
They glowered at me and said some things I didn't understand - maybe a good thing but damn, I wish I knew Spanish. I wished that over and over again over the next few days.

I got back to Dorothy who was whizzing through the paperwork. She filled me in on what to do and we finished - with a little translation help from a nice Mexican-Texan family.

Bueno. We were on our way. Border crossed. Check.

It felt pretty hairy. I'm sure my mind ratcheted up the danger more than what was real but most of our news of Mexico in the U.S. is about the border violence. It set me on guard and as anyone would do in uncharted waters I stayed on alert for the rest of the trip.

Next we head into Northern Mexico.


To read about my whole road trip from the beginning - Austin to Lake Chapala Mexico click here.

San Antonio - Day 1 - Austin to Guadalajara road trip

My wife's Aunt is retiring to Lake Chapala Mexico. And guess who volunteered to drive down to Mexico with her? :)

I flew from Boston to Austin to meet Dorothy who'd left from Washington DC days earlier. We made a beeline from the Austin Airport to San Antonio where I wanted to see the Alamo. "Remember the Alamo" is a cry we all know well and I was excited to see the legendary building. I was also excited to see the famed San Antonio Riverwalk.

We motored south through a surprisingly green Texas landscape and in 2 hours we were in San Antonio. We found a parking lot in what looked like a relatively ordinary Texas city and made our way to the Riverwalk where we were blown away by what lay one story below street level.

The Riverwalk definitely lived up to it's billing. It's beautiful. When you climb down the stairs to the river you enter a completely different world of water, verdant vegetation and majestic trees. Both sides of the winding U shaped river that snakes it's way through downtown San Antonio were full of restaurants, bars, clubs, shops and hotels.

What really surprised me was how private it all was. Driving through San Antonio you'd never know the river was even there. You really have to descend down into the Riverwalk to see it. I'm sure back in the day the river was simply a dirty old back alley waste receptacle of a gully.

Now the river is lined on both sides with wide sidewalks and grimy rear basement walls are now beautiful and inviting places to linger or shop.

The Alamo on the other hand was a bit disappointing. I thought it would be a historical museum kept as it was 1836 when General Santa Anna and his Mexican Army crushed a lowly group of feisty Texian supporters including legends like Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie. Instead the Alamo grounds are now a beautiful park-like compound and the icon that is the "Alamo" building is actually a memorial chapel whose exit door puts you on a path to the gift shop - which was actually full of historic Bowie knives - pretty cool....ok yeah, I bought a gift, a mini Alamo.

What to do? Back to the Riverwalk for some Mexican food and Margaritas. We were clearly closer to Mexico as the Mexican population became ubiquitous - and - most importantly we encounter our first Mariachis!

Check us out in moving pictures!

Next, we cross the border at Nuevo Laredo.

Honk Festival 2009 - Boston, Ma.

Every year in Boston, Davis Square Somerville to be specific, Honk Fest happens. It's a festival of Street Bands from all over the world. This years participants included bands from Oakland, Montreal, Rome Italy, Vancouver, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, New Orleans, Providence, Boston and many more.... It's a lot of fun. Bank geeks unite.

one time, in band camp...

I met my Bro at the Fest this year for the Saturday events. On Sunday there is a Honk parade from Davis Square to Harvard Square - for the annual Oktoberfest. Next year we go on Sunday!

Check it out.

Cooter Brown's - New Orleans

Our cabbie Linda (previous post) dropped us at Cooter Brown's - a Tavern and Oyster Bar. I've never tasted Oysters like I had in New Orleans. They were big and meaty and clean. I felt like I was eating Gnocchi not Oysters. The Mississippi sends about a billion gallons of fresh water over them everyday so you don't get that briny flavor.

Combine that with an Alligator Po-Boy and an ice cold Abita and you have the start of a great night.

Fun cabbie - New Orleans

Linda is a cab driver in New Orleans. She picked us up on Magazine street and we intended to go back to the French Quarter for oysters but Linda took it upon herself to give us a riotous tour around the Garden District, Uptown and Carrollton - and she dropped us at Cooter Brown's, a great Tavern and Oyster Bar. Mmmm.