Laredo to San Antonio - Mexico Through the Mirror

At first glance, Laredo, the border town, is wholly American: coming from Mexico you get the full culture shock.  Roads are smooth, everything is clean, parkinglots are vast, restaurants have doors, business signs are printed.  You have crossed the line into the First World, and the difference is stark. 

                                                

But Mexico is still present in Laredo.  In the stores I went into, and especially the restaurants, the music of the Spanish language could be heard fluttering back and forth behind the counters, amongst the clerks and waiters.  It made me wonder how many of those cars crossing the border were Mexicans who live on one side and work on the other.  Laredo thus seems bilingual, even bicultural, but in the manner of a lap joint, with the USA sliding in on top to fit to its neighbor.

By “the USA,” it should be understood, I mean the Land of The Franchises and Home of the Brands, for Laredo is a mighty shopping strip for big box retail.  Coming from Mexico, the triumph of cold reiteration has its appeal of familiarity: an IHOP breakfast, a Sprint store to plug back into my cellphone account, TWO Best Buy stores, were all within range of my hotel.  Given that my animating image of America was a smalltown restaurant where I could get coffee and pie, there nevertheless remains something soothing and efficient in this world of prepackaged experience. 

(The Best Buy, alas, didn’t have a replacement camera body for me.  They had the Sony a5100, and I was tempted, but I have three Canon lenses, dammit.  So I’m still taking pictures with my iPad.)

I got another last look at Mexico, in the rear-view mirror as it were, up the road in San Antonio, where I arrived in time to visit the Alamo yesterday.

A thunderstorm was clearing off leaving the streets puddled and the air still humid as I arrived at the site in downtown San Antonio, where the old stone building and the low walls of its compound are preserved amidst banks, hotels, and office buildings.  (Entry is free, but parking costs $15.00.)  The Alamo is probably the most curious tourist attraction in America.  It commemorates a battle lost, not even by the United States, but by rebellious settlers within Mexico fighting to establish Texas as a third country.  Yet somehow the massacre has been appropriated as a patriotic American symbol, to the point where flags of all 50 states stand inside the building alongside metal plaques naming the fallen.  The building was originally a church before it was a fort, and a twisted version of the sanctity remains: visitors must remove their hats and take no photos as they contemplate the last redoubt of brave soldiers. 

Inside, the old stone is a mottled white like palsied skin.  It’s a small space, undecorated, with nothing in it, and aside from the plaques and the scale model showing the cannon placements there’s nothing to see.  Perhaps that’s why they’ve added a large garden outdoors, and a living history exhibit, and a film about the battle, and a great stone bas-relief monument, and a gift shop.  Part of the garden is given over to a series of standing panels showing the history on a timeline, and I was struck by the illustration of Miguel Hidalgo, founding father of Mexican Independence.  Whereas in Mexico he is represented (everywhere) as a larger-than-life, leonine, heroic figure, the picture here showed a gnome-like little priest amid books.  Farewell Mexico.

I liked downtown San Antonio.  The streets are broad and clean, the buildings large and handsome, traffic light, and a great, spacious quiet reigns over it.  I had lunch prematurely at an expensive hotel restaurant near the Alamo, prematurely because I then found, just a few blocks further on, dozens of better restaurant possibilities along what they call the “Riverwalk.”  This is a boutique remodelling of the city’s little river into an upscale promenade, sunken below street level so you descend on stairs into a separate world of meandering tan stone walkways along the water, overhanging trees, romantic arched bridges, tray-like canal boats going by, and, on both banks, a line of tony restaurants and expensive hotels.  It’s an open-air shopping and strolling galleria, and the only element that doesn’t participate is the old river, whose murky waters slop sluggishly with the unmoving detritus of leaves and litter.  It was a nice place to walk.

When I came back up to the streets I found myself before the “Buckhorn Saloon Museum,” an emporium of antlers, stuffed animal heads, and the promise of tacky Texas glories inside, including Bonnie and Clyde’s “actual car!”  I bought the ticket for $20 and went in, and added an $8.00 beer from the saloon to carry with me into the museums in back.

There was enough taxidermy on display to be sad (including a room full of stuffed fish), but this was the kind of place that celebrated guns, gunfights, hunting and carnival sideshows—a little bit of everything for the 1950s boy in you.  There was an exhibit on the history of the old Texas Rangers, others on P.T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill, skulls of both Asian AND African elephants (interesting to see the difference) and whole rooms dedicated to obscure target-shooting marvels from the turn of the century.  Oh, and the car was indeed a lovely old 1930s sedan—with “bullet hole” stickers plastered all over it.  In short, it was good tacky fun, but not worth the $20 (and I couldn’t finish the beer).

Run For the Border

There’s not much to tell about my last two days in Mexico.  From Xilitla it was a straight shot to the border.  The first day’s drive was very scenic on a lovely smooth two-lane road, with high grass growing right up to the edge of the road and green fields beyond, really the nicest driving of the trip, like driving in Ireland.  I spent the night in Cuidad Victoria, a typical blot of a run-down Mexican city in crumbling cement, where the hotel actually had an underground parking garage (score!) and where I did my laundry.  There wasn’t much else to do in Cuidad Victoria.  The second day took me through Monterrey and on to the border crossing. 

I’m sorry to not be sorry about skipping Monterrey.  I gather that some people are very proud of it.  I missed my turnoff for the ring road and took the highway straight through the center of town, so I did get a glimpse when I looked up from the chaotic traffic.  Tall metal skyscrapers like electrical components, billboard signs for American franchises like Home Depot and Office Max, a last spur of dramatic mountains hazed brown by smog.  And I was through.

From there, the drive was on ever bigger highways through ever bigger land, wide flat scrub desert from horizon to horizon, the road a shimmering ribbon into it.  The further North I went, the more the thermometer climbed: 70, 80, 90.  It was a strange feeling approaching the United States from Mexico.  I could feel it ahead, the long straight line of it, like a great weight pressing downwards.  I thought of all the desperate migrants making the final stage of their approach through this land.  Around me on the highway were mostly big trucks, some with Texas plates; armadas of them were moored at the truck stops and weigh stations in the dust.

At the border in Nuevo Laredo the temperature hit 100 and I had to stop at the Banjercito on the Mexican side to officially log my Miata out.  A great parkinglot behind a chickenwire fence rose and fell and glinted chrome, behind which ran a long dilapidated government building, white with huge black letters.  Literally pouring sweat and having to wipe my brow on my sleeve every minute wasn’t, I thought, the best look for applying to cross the border, but there was nothing for it but to clamber out of my Miata and give it a try.  The entrances to the Banjercito side of the building were closed off with hanging police tape, so I had to walk the length of the building—passing a marching file of armed soldiers in camouflage—and go in through the side marked “MIGRACION” where all the Mexicans herded in a room of plastic seats waiting their turn.  Fortunately my side was sparsely populated, the paperwork went quickly, and I was able to go back to Pepin and peel my vehicle permit sticker off her windshield (it left behind a sticky residue).

From there Google had some last fun with me, routing me to the border crossing via the back streets of Nuevo Laredo (there must be a major road for this), through one more slum where I crawled over jagged cement speed bumps, dodged potholes, and peeked around blind unmarked corners.  Then I joined the hundreds of cars inching toward the checkpoint.  “Welcome to the United States of America!” Google Maps crowed suddenly, about ten cars premature.  But I got through, and in, with no trouble.

I spent last night here in Laredo, just on the American side, at a pleasant faceless hotel (“Extended Stay America”) on a pleasant faceless suburban retail strip.  It was very strange to be able to chat about the heat, in English, with the large friendly guy checking in alongside me, and to go to dinner at a little suburban bar and grille nearby with air conditioning and multiple TVs showing sports where I ordered a burger with sweet potato fries from the menu.  It was like waking up from a dream, or perhaps falling into one.

There was one readjustment I had to make at once.  As soon as I crossed the border, of course, my little Panasonic cellphone with the Telcel plan, that I’d bought in Acapulco, ceased to get data.  I found my hotel by grace of the blue Navigation line still showing on the screen, and once in my room I connected to the hotel wi-fi, found a Sprint store in Laredo, used my mobile printer to print out the map to it, forged back out into the oven-like heat, and drove over.  At the store I was hoping they could simply add the Panasonic phone to my plan—it’s a fine little phone, and I like it—but it wasn’t “compatible” (in fact, the very notion of a Panasonic cellphone made the clerks laugh).  So, yes, I had to buy ANOTHER cellphone, the third such of my trip.  This one at least is financed on my normal plan and has my proper phone number.  

Back in my hotel room I spread out my United States map, and tried to figure out my route from here to Algonkian Park, Virginia, the great inauguration of Part II of my travels.  But the heat and the weight of the burger caught up with me, and I fell asleep.

I'm back in the USA.

The Enigma of Las Pozas

I’m currently in the little town of Xilitla, still within the green mountains of San Luis Potósi.  Xilitla is a couple of cement-paved streets and crowing roosters on a hillside, plus someone blasting hop-hop music from a parked car under my hotel window.  The only reason I’m here is to see the nearby attraction of Las Pozas, which I did yesterday.  It was probably my last tourist attraction in Mexico, as from here I head straight for the border, but it was probably the most bizarre of all.

I’d heard of Las Pozas, and seen travel videos about it, and music videos set it in, and had fellow travellers at hostels recommend it.  In the name of all of the above, I think I’ll describe what it is by quoting my Lonely Planet guidebook:

“Las Pozas is a monumental scultpure garden built in thick jungle that links a series of concrete temples, pagodas, bridges, pavilions and spiral stairways with a necklace of natural waterfalls.  The surrealist creation stands as a memorial to the imagination and excessive wealth of Edward James (1907-84).  A drop-out English aristocrat and poet, he became a patron of Salvador Dali in the late 1930s and subsequently went on to amass the largest private collection of surrealist art in the world.”

What the rich, mad Old Worlder left behind here amid the steaming heat and draping, overhanging foliage is something like a gargantuan ruined playground based on the works of M.C Escher and Dr. Seuss.  You follow narrow paths through the jungle to come across one inconceivable cement structure after another, huge surrealist flights rising in spirals and pillars, with bulbs and domes, towers, unreachable rooms high in the air, stairs going nowhere, windows to nothing, multiple stories that don’t connect.  It’s an attempt to bring the symbols of a children’s book to life, and somehow it’s the kind of thing that could only be found in Mexico, wild fancies manifested in heavy drab cement and left to decay, like some abandoned socialist garden.  You admire it in surprise and a kind of pity.  The connecting stairs and paths hide one construction from another and make you quite sweaty as you seek them out, but the most charming aspect is just the gateways and the hidden routes, leading you on, until you loop back and realize you’ve seen it all.  The guidebook said one could spend a whole day there, but I finished sooner.  They give you a rubber bracelet with an electronic chip in it when you enter, and you hand it back when you leave.

The site has a nice café where I had lunch. 

(Photos taken with my iPad...I still miss my camera)

Fun and Wet Sneakers in the Sierra Gordo

After my multiple encounters with the Mexican highway police the day before, my desire when leaving San Miguel de Allende was to head for the remote wilderness on back roads.  Fortunately, this was already my plan.

My final sightseeing fling in Mexico, before I make a straight line for the border, is to explore the lush forestland of San Luis Potósi, home of mountains, waterfalls, and exotic wildlife.  So I set out for the town of Jalpan, in the heart of the National Park called the “Reserva de la Biosfera Sierra Gordo.” 

Jalpan is reached by a single road that winds into the mountains.  To get to it, however, entailed jumping back on Highway 56 for a short leg southward.  So spooked was I about that highway, that setting out on it (especially southward, i.e., back TOWARDS it) caused my heart to pound and my breath to get short.  In fact after a few moments I pulled over, grabbed my cellphone, looked at the map, and forced Google to choose a connecting route on secondary roads.  My theory was the smaller the road, the less likely it was to have highway patrols.  As soon as I was off Highway 56 I felt much safer.

It also led to a more interesting drive.  My one-lane connecting road ran through industrial farmland, past huge agribusinesses with their own rail lines, fields full of cows, horses grazing at roadside, a massive cowboy event that shut down the road to let a string of pickup trucks file out in a cloud of dust: a side of Mexico I hadn’t seen.  It’s funny: normally driving my yellow Miata through that sort of milieu would have made me nervous.  Now, as long as I saw no highway patrols, everyone was my friend.

Eventually the connecting road connected, to the even smaller road to Jalpan, and I headed up out of the flatlands and into the switchbacks.  At this point I felt safe enough to actually put the top down and enjoy the swing and swoop through the amazing green dorsals that began to rise and plunge around me under a blue sky.  My wounded Miata behaved wonderfully, as did I, considering it was the day after a road accident.  To be fair it was 20-mph swooping, as not only were the switchbacks that tight, but on the one-lane road I was frequently in a traffic jam, held up behind a grinding truck.  That was fine; when I got tired of the company I simply seized a pullout, stretched my legs, enjoyed the country air, then drove on in pleasant privacy (at least until I caught the tail of the traffic jam again).  The sun, the miles of forested mountains breathing around me, the vistas into hazy V-cut distances, all soothed my soul.

Jalpan is a cute little town in the middle of the “Reserva:” a pretty square with an old church and a couple of clean, cobbled streets with shops and restaurants.  After eating a late lunch of chicken fajitas at my Posada Mexico restaurant (where I’m staying, in a room off a dormitory-style hall in the back), I walked into the square to try to book a wilderness tour for the next day—the thing to do in the Reserva.

The tour companies had little kiosks on the square.  At first I struck out, as the company I spoke to didn’t have enough people to make a trip.  But in the morning after writing my blog post, when I wandered into the square wondering what to do, I found a different tour kiosk whose blue-shirted people were loading up their van and ready to set out on a waterfall tour in five minutes!  I jumped aboard.

It was a great fun day.  The tour went to the El Chuveje waterfall and the Puente de Dios ravine, two spots where the water pouring through these lush steep forests steps out in dramatic abandon in the privacy of hidden grottoes deep in the woods.  Though exposed now to the tourist trade their privacy is only slightly impaired: they’re hard to find, both accessed down bumpy, twisty dirt roads off the main road, followed by hikes on well-maintained trails.  There were six of us in the group, led by a nice-looking young guide with heavy dark curls and a scraggly dark beard, and I was the only English speaker, but everyone was friendly. 

It was a day when I really missed my camera; I used my cellphone—which takes terrible photos, almost unsalvageable even in post-processing—and otherwise tried to take the advice of Paul Theroux and Henry Miller and collect my impressions the old-fashioned way.  That began with the drive high up through the Sierra Gordo mountains, whose huge peaks and deep valleys were set exactly as far apart as great waves on the sea, though scaled enormously greater and carpeted in nubbly green treetops even up their sheerest sides.

El Chuveje was the more polite display, and even the more formally staged.  The hike led along the rushing stream of grey-green water, to a spot in the woods where a series of placid descending pools have been created with artificial berms.  With a brown grotto of trails on each side, romantic arched bridges spanning the stream, and huge trees lifting their dappled trunks from the water’s edge to a hang a ceiling of innumerable flecks of green and gold above, it looked rather like a movie set, but was no less charming for that.

A little further on was the Chuveje waterfall itself, a white plunge in the rough shape of a musical clef down smooth-bellied stone and serifs of diverging spray.  We lingered at the roaring green pool for a while.

The second attraction, the Puente de Dios, was a much more immersive affair—literally.  This trail followed its stream into a severe-sided ravine, and several times switched sides, necessitating fording the waters.  At first I tried to keep my sneakers dry, holding them up as I waded knee-deep on flat submerged rocks, but after a few of these I gave in, put them back on, and got delightfully wet in the cool mineral-blue surge of mountain water alongside all the other tourists. 

Our second guide helps one of our group ford the stream.

This is about how deep I got wet.

The path through the ravine became ever more dramatic, sometimes ascending on ladders through holes in the wet overhanging rock, sometimes following a catwalk along one wall of a cut so steep it seemed an interior space, like a room in a house given over to the thunder and green light of passing waters.  It ended in a surrealist vision of a cave: here the stream had cut a twenty-foot-high archway through a mass of overhanging rock and greenery, under which one could wade shin-deep, but there must have been water above too, because from the roof of the archway jets of it poured down, channeled through weird stone tunnels like inverted fumaroles.  The effect of waterfalls inside a cave was as if massive kitchen faucets were emptying into a covered sink. 

In short, by the end of the day I was bruised, sunburned, and soaked from my thighs down—a fabulous trip.

The Strangest Day of My Life

I’m not sure how to write about this day; I’m not even 100% sure how to understand it.  It was either the worst day of my life, or perhaps the luckiest.  Two days later, sitting at my B&B in the mountain town of Jalpan, I’m still shocky over it. 

By the time Friday, August 18, was done, I had almost lost my passport, been shaken down by Mexico cops not once but twice, and been in a car accident on the highway.  I should say immediately that I’m unhurt, and my Miata is still driving fine, though its rear end is bashed in.  And then, to cap off the day, I recovered my license plate that had been stolen over a month ago.

I’ll start with the latter, just to explain why I was trying to get to San Miguel de Allende in the first place.  My license plate, you’ll recall, was stolen back in June on my visit there.  I had a spare plate, which I’ve been driving with since, but of course it doesn’t have my tags.  Well, weeks later, and miles onward, I was telling the story to someone who lives in Mexico, who said that the plate was likely “stolen”—by the police!  They do that when they issue parking tickets, to make sure you come and pay.  I emailed my contact in San Miguel, Shelley Cohee; she went down to the police station, and sure enough, they had my plate.  In short, she got it out of hock, and we set up a meeting on Friday for me to repay her and get it back.

It’s a short drive from Coyoacán to San Miguel de Allende—at least normally.  My meeting with Shelley was at noon, so I got ready to leave Hostal Cuija at 6:30 am.  Fortunately the hostel was almost empty, and I had the six-bunk room to myself, so I could turn on the light and pack everything up.  Then I set out in the morning darkness.

The first thing that happened was the GPS on my new cellphone suddenly went wonky.  I was using Google Maps Navigation to get me through the maze of Mexico City to the highway, and suddenly it had no idea where I was.  I managed to get to the highway by staring at the little map on the screen and pulling over several times to peer at street names in the dark, as the morning traffic thickened and honked around me.  Finally I was headed North on the artery as the sun rose.

I was about an hour into the drive, on the outskirts of Mexico City, when the first cops pulled me over, two of them on motorcycles.  It turned out I had completely forgotten Mexico City’s arcane driving restrictions, which prohibits cars from driving on certain days of the week based on their license plate number.  The cops informed me that I was in violation: Friday was a no-drive day for me, at least between 5:00 am and 11:00 am. 

I was trying to explain the situation to them when I went to show them my identification.  And that’s when I realized I’d left the little neck-string bag with my passport under my pillow at the hostel.

In a weird way it took the cops pulling me over to save me from a worse situation.  And I’m sure that my face of absolute horror and panic helped convince them of my helpless sincerity and need to return immediately to my hotel.  They did shake me down, taking pretty much all the cash on me, after which one led me on his motorcycle through the streets necessary for a U-Turn, and I headed back into Mexico City.  Now it was full rush hour, the highway a solid ribbon of shining cars into the city in the distance.  As we proceeded inch by inch I had plenty of time to offer every prayer that I could think of that my passport bag would be there under the pillow, and envision every nightmare scenario—all of them fully deserved—in which it wouldn’t.

By the time I got back to Hostal Cuija my bladder was bursting, but I ran in straight to the bunkroom and lifted the pillow.  There was my bag, right where I had left it.

It was 9:30.  I explained to the amused staff as best I could what had happened, emailed Shelley to reschedule our meeting, replenished my cash at the local ATM down the street, and then waited out the time in the hostel common room until 11:00 when I could legally drive.  The couch was so comfortable, I really didn’t want to go.  But off I went, faulty GPS and all.

The second shakedown was on the highway, well on the way to San Miguel, thin traffic moving fast, and was worse.  This pair was in a cop car, and after parking well behind me on the shoulder leaned in my window to genially tell me that not only was I speeding (I was actually going slower than most traffic) but I was still in violation of my no-drive day (it was well after 11:00).  At first they wanted a fine of $1,500 US dollars.  “No dollars!” I said.  They then settled on $3,100 pesos, which I also didn’t have.  We went back and forth on this for a while; they had all the patience in the world.  The cop, his gun handle showing, then suggested that he get in my passenger seat and accompany me to an ATM.  I pretended not to understand, then explained quite honestly that I couldn’t clear the passenger seat because my trunk was full. 

I realize that in that situation you’re supposed to volunteer to go to the station with them, at which point they usually settle.  But in my shaken state this didn’t occur to me.  I was trying to offer what I had, less the money I would need for tolls to complete my drive, which I couldn’t calculate, and the lead cop was simply shaking his head with a smile.  We were at an impasse, and they were prepared to drag it out as long as necessary. 

Out of nowhere came a shriek of tires.  A little white car spun out of control at high speed on the highway, skidded spinning onto the shoulder, struck the parked cop car, and rebounded off coming backwards right at me from behind.  I had a glimpse of one cop pulling his partner bodily out of the way, and then BAM, my Miata was struck a vicious punch from behind.

There was a moment of confusion that unfolded into an uncertain span of time.  The white car sat a few feet behind mine, its rear end mangled, steaming.  Two Mexicans got out, slightly bloodied, and leaned on the guardrail silently.  I turned off my engine, got out, and surveyed my yellow Miata’s crushed rear bumper and left taillight with an expression of sheer disbelief.  The cops were off a ways, on the phone and directing traffic.  I tried to ask if the Mexicans were all right, but they paid me no attention.  We all stood around on the roadside in the hot day.  Eventually the lead cop came back, his hard smile replaced by a face open and wondering, and signed to me that he had made a call and I was free to go. 

I didn’t need to be signed twice.  Cautiously I started up my Miata and eased her forward.  She seemed to be driving, so I pulled away onto the highway.  Gears worked, brakes worked, power windows worked, there was no wobble.  She was running fine.  After a few miles I leaned over and popped my passenger side mirror back into position.  And continued slowly on.

I was in terror of further cops, especially if it was in fact still my no-drive day.  Several times I looked hard at roadside hotels in little truck-stop villages along the highway, thinking to pull off, but I continued on.  And I got the rest of the way to San Miguel de Allende doing 45 to 50 mph in the right lane. 

I was glad I’d been in the town before.  With my scattershot GPS it took me a while to find my hostel, but navigating those crazy streets barely wide enough for a car, rumbling over the rocky cobblestones and dodging pedestrians, didn’t faze me in the least.  I even remembered which streets were where.  And within a few minutes I was checked into my hostel, and my wounded Miata was parked in a secure off-street garage nearby. 

At 5:00 pm, then, there I was: sitting with a beer at a patio table of a charming and familiar restaurant, in the golden light of a San Miguel de Allende evening, waiting for Shelley.  She soon appeared, with a friend of hers from Boston in tow, and we all went next door to the magnificent estate home where she works.  For a couple of hours we strolled the gorgeous rooms and grounds of the mansion (Kathy was getting the tour), deep in conversation about everything under the sun, ending up on the roof garden at sunset where the cypress trees framed the dome and pink church spire next door and the high view over the valley showed distant skirts of rain turning patches of gold by the light.  And somewhere in the middle Shelley opened an office drawer and I got back my original Washington State license plate with the tags still valid through December.

The smashed rear bumper did not interfere with my screwing it back into place.

Like I say, I don’t know how to parse that day.  I’m alive.  I’m not in jail.  My car still runs.  I have my passport on me.  I’m traumatized, but I did know enough to offer many thanks of gratitude to Shelley, despite the mist of surreality attending everything around me, and I didn’t fail to offer a few in other directions as well. 

My bashed Miata...with its license plate back!