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.