Thursday Dec 6th Brigit Alexander, her 16 yr old daughter Mimi and
school friend Teresa, and I drove to Real de Catorce for a multiday
celebration of Humberto Fernandez' 70th bday. The drive down was
swift and easy and uneventful. A bit bizarrely, before being allowed
to enter the bridge on the US side, each car was being searched with
that nifty flashlight and mirror on a stick. When I asked why - we
were sonorously told that 'bad things were going in and out of
Mexico'. Then we were quizzed as to whether we knew what they were.
Brigit won points for quessing drugs were coming in. It was my
opinion that bad manners were being exported, but no, turns out guns
are being taken into Mexico strapped underneath tourist cars. Who
knew. We asked when this search had started and were informed 'it
was always this way'. Quess we were just lucky all those border
crossings over the past 30 years never to see this.
We had a short stop on the other side for papers for Teresa. While
waiting in the parking lot, Mimi and I noticed a tv crew interviewing
several of the other drivers. Turns out they were doing a story
about campesinos traveling in caravans for safety. They were pretty
impressed that 4 gringas were traveling alone and wanted to interview
us. We wanted to get going and saw no reason to advertise our
presence on tv. Most of the autopista traffic is trucks, probably
80- 90%. Made it to Real by dark, and got up before dawn to hike to
the peak of the sacred mountain for a sunrise Huichol ceremony. Then
the partying started in earnest with dinners, dances, drinks, live
bands, and spectacular fireworks for the next 2 days. There were
about 80 guests who had bussed, flown and driven (and in the case of
the 4 Huichol, walked) in for the celebration. Hollywood was
represented by the director and camera people of The Mexican and
Pirates of the Caribeean. As usual there were at least 4 languages
being spoken.
Simultaneously, the town was celebrating one of their biggest
holidays - the procession of the virgin, a weekend of promenading the
virgins portrait thru the streets from one church to the other, then
back, wild ringing of church bells, dancing in feathered sequined
costumes (not sure what that was about) and live music. There was a
group of about a dozen ATV's at the hotel next to Brigits. And
perhaps 30 Harley riders at the Hotel Mina Real. A good time was
apparently had by all. Mimi Teresa and I drove down to the partially
completed Museo del Desierto, an ambitious underground complex with a
fancy road, enormous parking lot, elaborate sculptures scattered
across the creosote and cactus. and completely abandoned. Worth a
visit, very UFOish, and protected by numerous peyote plants.
On the drive home, we decided to try Colombia, since none of us had
been there for several years and we were intrigued by the flashy
billboards advertising crossing there. The Mexicans are building a
multi lane divided highway parallel to the river and there are
enormous complexes of factories, perhaps maquilidores? along the
way. We were briefly dismayed by 2 looooong lines of trucks and only
one other passenger car, idling. But Brigit opted past all the
vehicles, driving up onto the grass to get to the vehicle permit
booth to turn in her sticker. It was still trucks as far as we could
see, but the Mexicans promptly opened another lane and waved us past
everyone and onto the bridge. A delightful gesture.
The US side as ever was far less friendly and seemed irritated that a
passenger car had entered there interrupting their inactivity.
Finally after forbidding Brigit to get out of the car, and
questioning us numerous times about our occupations, why we were in
Mexico, etc. they got bored and waved us on as well.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit our website: http://texascavers.com
To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com
For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
