Mexico

In early May, I began a month long trip from Fort Worth, Texas south across the border through Brownsville and then west across Mexico towards Tijuana. In the middle of the trip, I stopped for two weeks in Zacatecas to attend more Spanish language school.

First stop… Pleasantville, Mexico. My first town to visit in Mexico was Ciudad Victoria. It’s not what I had expected at all. For a town of a quarter of a million people, it has a very small feel. There are parks every couple of blocks filled with lovers, young and old alike, holding hands and flirting on the benches. On the other corners are schools and daycares with school-uniformed children running and shouting on the playground. I thought I might run into Fonzie and the Happy Days gang at any minute. Victoria appears to be a great place that a family might want to raise their children, but I didn't find much for me to do or see. After 2 days, I hit the road for San Luis Potosí.

It seems that San Luis Potosí doesn’t get the full share of foreign tourists that it deserves, so when I walked around the town several forward-looking citizens, clearly wishing to improve that situation, stopped to make sure that my visit was going well. When I first noticed that they may not see many tourists like me, I was in the Museum of Masks and three boys around 13 who were also touring the museum, very shyly tried to take a picture of ME! When I smiled at them to indicate that I knew what they were doing, their leader boldly asked if he could take my picture. Of course, I complied, told them my name and where I’m from, and took their picture with my camera in return. Outside, while following a map of a walking tour of the city, I had a couple of different well-dressed businessmen stop me and ask if I needed help and ensured that I had seen their favorite sites. As we departed, one man really impressed me by saying, “Thank you for choosing to visit

Mexico”.

I stopped into Aguascalientes for a day, and hated it. To me, it’s just a rushed and crowded big city, although they have run a couple busy streets through tunnels underneath the more popular plazas in order to give more pedestrian space.

In the hostel, everyone would have pitched in to knock off the “techno gas” man. He drives around town starting at 7AM playing a few beats of techno music, followed by three long chants of gaaaaaaas, gaaaaaaas, gaaaaaaas blasting over a loudspeaker and repeating forever. If you need propane gas, you run outside flag him down, and he carries a bottle of propane from his truck up to your house. Later in the day, the bottled water truck starts making his rounds, but he only uses bells.

I started back in Spanish school here in Zacatecas. ... We spend 3 hours a day in a classroom practicing grammar with up to four other students and one teacher, 1 hour a day learning and singing Spanish songs with all of the other students, and 1 hour a day in a discussion over Spanish culture. ... This week, he has spent a lot of time discussing why the

US has developed the way it has, and why

Mexico the way it has. I’ll write briefly as I understand… The

US was settled by families who had no intention of returning to Europe.

Mexico was settled by Spanish men who came to extract the riches from the land with hopes of returning to

Spain as rich men. While in

Mexico, they married indigenous women, and that’s when the mestizo race developed. ...

I am staying in my own room with a Mexican family. They have 7 children from 28 to 39 years old. Two of the children live at home (Aure and Lucy), but another son (Jorge) and his wife are visiting from California for the week, and the others visit everyday, coming by for meals, babysitting, or just to chat. Jorge got here the same day that I moved in and the family had a big barbeque on the roof. We ate lots of tacos and watched soccer on TV. ....

I finished school on Friday, and I've hit the road again. I stopped over for a night in Torréon, and I have an hour in the bus station before my bus leaves. Torréon is a busy industrial city -- relatively dirty and not much in the way of architecture other than a few large colonial style government buildings and hotels in the central plaza. It's fame is the final home of Pancho Villa and the town where he was ambushed and killed in 1924. Since I'm here on a Sunday, I won't be able to visit his museum. Torréon does have a very lively center with shopping that could last you a lifetime, if that's what you're into. Next stop is Chihuahuah City and then to Basseachi, which is said to have the highest (not largest) waterfall in North America. From there, it's on to San Diego.

One morning, I left Chihuahua on a 6 AM bus heading for the village of Basaseachi, and found myself sitting next to a genuine Mexican cowboy – complete with snakeskin boots, Wranglers, a pearl-snap button down shirt, and a tightly-woven, white, straw hat. I couldn’t help finding it humorous that I was eating a traditional Mexican pastry called a concho, while he washed down his Lay’s potato chips with a Coca-Cola. ...

In the last few hours of this trip, passing between Mexicali and Tijuana, 9 men dressed in clean jeans and long sleeve shirts got on the bus, each carrying a plastic grocery bag with a gallon of water. They sat in separate seats spread out on the bus, and I never saw them speak to the driver. I was groggy, and I didn’t clue in on anything at this point. About two hours and two military roadblocks later, the bus stopped at the peak of a relatively small desert mountain range. The nine men climbed off the bus and briskly walked single-file behind the boulders to the North!

May 9 - June 9, 2004