David
No, the Colombia (this how it is spelled correctly) does not continue
straight to
hwy85 towards Monterrey, you'd have to follow the "Carretera Rivereña" for
about
50 kms. east to reach the infamous Carretera Nacional (85) or you can also
go west
after you cross the bridge and take your first left and that will eventually
take you to
Anahuac, Lampazos, Bustamante, Villaldama, etcetera.
On 7/4/07, David Locklear <dlocklea...@gmail.com> wrote:
I was in a Half-Priced books the other day, and found a street map of
Nuevo Laredo. It was a few years old. It was
part of a spiral bound atlas on the entire Laredo area including
both sides of the border. It was very detailed and showed information
I had never seen before.
This stirred up repressed memories,
We didn't have information like that back in the mid-80's when I started
crossing the border at Laredo to go caving in Bustamante.
Eventually we found a sketch of the streets in an old Texas Caver,
but by then, I think we had finally learned how to negotiate all the
"desvaciones" to get thru Nuevo Laredo and on to Bustamante.
In order to get a topo map of Mexico, you had to visit the INEGI store
in Monterrey. I recall an Austin caver ( whose name I won't reveal )
started selling topo maps, and we eventually met a local from Monterrey
who sold us used maps.
On trips down there, we would look out for professional bookstores that
might have maps, and the maps we found were often vague or have some
wrong information.
I seem to recall going to our university library and trying to find
map information,
but it was on microfiche or something and it was not very helpful.
Today's cavers can purchase Guia, a road atlas book at local Spanish
bookstores in Texas and also at gas stations along the border.
There are internet maps,
CD maps, car navigation systems, and if they get lost they just call
someone
on their cell-phone.
We didn't have cell-phones, and some of us didn't even have a land-line.
We used pay phones or where ever we could find a phone. I remember
sitting in a tiny restaruant in Candela, where I mailed post-cards back
home to assure everybody I was o.k. They found out I was o.k., about
2 or 3 weeks later.
In addition to that,
We also didn't have a PC of any kind. ( There was a tiny Apple
in the school's lab, but it was not linked to any information, such as
maps )
so we could not print out a map like caver's can do today. )
There was no e-mail. If we wanted to invite someone to go caving, we
might have resorted to sending a post-card by regular mail. In college
we
went to their apartment ( or dorm room ) and knocked on the door.
Imagine that?
The best source of map information I had was the cavers publication on the
"Caves of the Inter-American Highway," however, I had already been caving
in Mexico about a dozen times, before I found a copy of it. [ I think
copies
of that are much more easy to obtain now, right? ]
Am I leaving out anything?
There were no toll-roads. The Columbia bridge did not exist. We
were lucky
if we could pick-up radio stations in the car. I seem to recall
someone having
a portable battery powered cassette radio, but I didn't know anybody with
a cassette player in their car. There were still people with 8
track players in
the cars, but my fuzzy memory doesn't remember going caving with them.
There is a new country western song about this phenomena. "It
was not just a different time, it was a different life." I agree
with "parts" of that song. We really did spend our childhood
drinking from a garden hose. Going inside to get
a drink did not make any sense. Last week, I took my family to show
them
how far I had to walk to get to elementary school. We did it in
the rain and the
snow and the sleet. And we got one pair of shoes each year when school
started. And our schools had no air-conditioning. There was a
small fan
in the class-room. I do not recall that being a problem.
David Locklear
P.S. Does the crossing at Columbia now continue straight all the
way to Highway
85 going to Monterrey? That is what the map said and it
was old. I
haven't crossed at Columbia or in Laredo in years. I do
recall travelling
on the Texas side toll-road, right after it first opened
up. That was my
last time down there.
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