South of the border

Thursday, September 22 (Day 6) — Hurricane Rita has turned slightly north and now seems likely to hit western Louisiana. That's my unscientific opinion, not shared by cable news channels or the National Weather Service. How is it possible that a casual observer such as myself could dare to contradict the experts when they say this storm will slam into Galveston and Houston? Because it would just be wrong, that's all. We've already destroyed part of one major U.S. city this hurricane season, so two hits in the same year just doesn't make sense to me. I could see New Orleans getting broadsided again, however, to add insult to injury. But I hope that doesn't happen. None of it should impact the remainder of our trip, unless you count increases to already astronomically high fuel prices. Three, four, five bucks a gallon. Won't make a lick of difference because we still have to get back home eight days from now. Which brings me to the subject of today's misadventures: El Paso. It was pretty much everything we'd been warned it would be. But sometimes you have to find these things out for yourself, which is what all the fun of taking a road trip is about.

I am starting a dangerous trend of waking up before the rest of the family. I did it again today, rising at 8 a.m. just minutes before Roni and then Ben. That left us with plenty of time to make the continental breakfast, which we consumed while watching hurricane coverage on CNN. They love showing us footage of people evacuating Houston in endless traffic-clogged streams on I-45. Guess it's good to be prepared, but the media are overplaying the preparations to the hilt. We're getting later on our departure times, as this morning we had more rearranging to do in the back of the car. I was curious to see if my rubber cactus was still attached to the antenna and was pleased to find that it was.

We headed on into El Paso on I-10, not quite sure if the smog we saw hovering on the horizon was coming mostly from El Paso or neighboring Juarez, Mexico. The first thing you see as you approach the city from the west is the ASARCO smelting plant with its giant smokestack. It looks like a gross polluter, and according to information I found on the Internet this evening, it is. Perhaps it was a contributing factor to the smog layer, but I doubt it was the sole cause. The factory is beautiful in an ugly, industrial sort of way. We drove down a few miles and took the Santa Fe Street exit that was supposed to lead us to the visitor center. At least the signs said there was a visitor center. Somehow we either missed the turn or they gave up on the directions, because we never found it. Instead, we wound up at one of the city's four border crossings into Juarez. This one appeared to be the largest, but we weren't quite ready for a visit to America's southern neighbor. We followed the road a ways in hopes of finding a monument that a number of signs pointed us to. Being that we were going to spend an entire day in El Paso, we wanted to get out of the car and have a look around. We found the park where the monument was located, but somehow we didn't see the monument. At least we don't think we did. There was something in the middle of the park that could have been a monument, but it looked like a series of brick walls and didn't do anything for us. We drove on. We wandered through a poor business district back toward the way we had entered town. Being a border city, many of the shops in this area of El Paso cater to a Hispanic clientele. We passed a couple of street corner flea markets as well as small grocery stores and other services. There is a fair amount of business that comes from Mexicans crossing the border to shop. It is an interesting cultural mix.

It appears that Americans, to a lesser degree, also cross the border for day visits. That was the category we fell under. And naturally there were several parking lots ready to take our car if we were interested in crossing the border on foot. The hunt for the memorial was a bust, so we decided to check out Juarez now instead of later. The tourist brochures all talked about how there is a public marketplace just over the border, so we thought that might be fun to visit with Ben, give him a chance to say he'd been to a foreign country, buy some trinkets and then head back. Maybe an hour or two tops. We parked in one of the day lots — $3 for eight hours, such a deal. Our very helpful and very eager attendant offered to give us a bus tour of the city. He'd even give us a deal, "much cheaper than the other guys," whoever the other guys were. We thanked him but said we'd pass. I told everyone to make sure the car was locked (this wasn't the best area of town) and we were off... to find an ATM machine. Seems Roni was running low on cash, which wouldn't be a good thing in a foreign country where American currency is the universal language. We wandered around the block asking the locals where to find the machine, and finally we located one in one of the other car lots. $60 and a $1.75 service charge later, we walked up to the gate to begin our walk over to the other side. We each paid 35 cents to pass the turnstile and proceeded up the fenced walkway along with dozens of other pedestrians. To our left, the bridge was choked with northbound vehicles heading into Texas; there were no cars going south. Perhaps there was another place where the vehicles entering Mexico had to pass. We never saw one. As we walked, we could look to our right at the ugly canal that passes for the Rio Grande in these parts. Train tracks were on either side, and the banks were covered with (mostly) anti-American graffiti scrawled in Spanish. Razor-wire fences on both sides of the border reduced the river area into a sort of no-man's land. A very depressing place.

Arriving at the south end of the pedestrian bridge, we were deposited onto the streets of Juarez with not a clue as to where we were or where we were going. Despite having read all those tourist brochures, we hadn't brought any of them with us. We passed a few shops looking for something that suggested the outdoor market we sought. We thought that perhaps if we followed other pedestrians they might lead us to where we wanted to be. But people were walking every which way. Should we turn left? Right? Go straight? My anxiety was growing. Then I saw a sign that looked like it might be directions to something touristy. It was blue anyway. In America, blue signs are often associated with tourist information. There were people heading that way. Aha! We walked toward the sign and followed the crowd, figuring we'd come to the market on the other side. It was supposed to be right near the border crossing, after all. But after passing through an alley, we came up to a major intersection that sat across from a parking garage and a government building. People still walking east, so we followed along, getting curious looks as we went. Our attire, ethnicity and the camera dangling from my neck basically screamed tourists. I got hit up by a Spanish-speaker for money and avoided paying him anything by professing my (bonafide) ignorance of Spanish. Then a couple blocks later some fellow approached me and asked if I spoke English. That should have been a tip-off to a scam right there. When I told him I did, the guy launched into a sob story about how he was originally from New York and now living in Juarez with his sick wife who needed an operation, and his twin kids who hadn't eaten in a few days. He also had two hernias. Then he pulled out a gold-colored medallion that he swore to me was real gold, and was about to ask me to buy it off of him when I cut the conversation short and told him I had to catch up with my family who had walked ahead and left me to deal with the panhandlers. I didn't put it quite like that, but I was thankful to have an excuse to not be solicited further. I decided at that point to squirrel away the camera in its case in hopes of drawing less attention.

Meanwhile, Roni and Ben were attempting to buy sodas at a street vendor. They were 50 cents each, for which Roni attempted to pay with a twenty. "Do you have any dollars?" the young woman at the counter asked. No one in these parts likes to make change for big bills, we discovered. We fished out something smaller and received change in U.S. and Mexican currency. I have no idea if the three peso coins we received were really the right change, but Ben liked the fact that he had a cool new souvenir.

We hadn't found the market yet and I was becoming increasingly nervous that we were setting ourselves up to get into trouble if we continued fumbling about in an unfamiliar city where we didn't speak the language. Juarez is nothing like Tijuana, which I've always considered an annex to San Diego. This city has some additional rough edges that don't make it tourist friendly unless you know what you're doing. We talked it over and decided to head back to the border crossing. Besides, Ben's patience was pretty thin as he wasn't happy being in a place where everyone spoke Spanish and he couldn't understand them or the signage. Maybe a little cultural immersion was enough for his first time. We returned to Texas via the eastern pedestrian walkway and went through the routine questioning of the Border Patrol guards — "Are you an American citizen? Where were you born?" We found our way back to the car and prepared to leave. Right away Roni discovered that I had left the car mostly unlocked, and that after making a big production of how we should lock up tight! I shudder to think what might have happened. We had ALL our stuff in the back seat and in the trunk — camera gear, laptop, music players and clothing — things I would have died a thousand times had anything happened to them. Fortunately all was where it was supposed to be and we continued on.

We were parked in the Chihuahuita district of El Paso, which has historic roots. I thought we could follow the signs that pointed to the historic district and see some old buildings or something. Somehow I would up crossing the BNSF tracks into a dead end at the Rio Grande, where a Border Patrol agent saw our car with the California plates and followed me back to the main road. I stopped and rolled down my window to let him know I was just lost, looking for Chihuahuita. He gave me a puzzled look and that was the end of it. Ben and Roni gave me total grief at being stopped by the Border Patrol. Of course we didn't appear to be doing anything illegal. I told Roni it was a good thing they didn't question us about "little Juan" in the backseat. We were headed back toward Santa Fe Street when we were forced to turn another direction because of a procession of police vehicles going to the funeral of a sheriff's deputy. We wound up following the frontage road that hugs the border for several miles until we were able to find I-10.

We rode I-10 west until we reached the downtown business district again. Roni had read in one of her guides that there was a scenic ridge tour we could take. That sounded good compared to what we had just seen. We passed a lot of nicer homes up in the hills and I was beginning to think there was hope we might salvage something positive out of the El Paso visit. But somehow I got lost amid the network of streets and wound up on Highway 85, which took us... back to ASARCO! Now we were on this industrial highway with no place to turn around easily, passing razor wire fences and looking across the polluted Rio Grande into poverty-stricken Juarez. I finally was able to make a U-turn and made it back to the area with the nice homes. I tried to work with Roni to find the turn we had missed. We wound up heading back into the downtown, passing the El Paso Science Museum, making a series of right-hand turns. And then I found myself on some unfamiliar stretch of road. Maybe THIS was finally the way. My hopes were up... until I saw the ASARCO smokestack looming in front of us once more. AAAARRRGGHH!

That was the final straw. We'd spent several hours driving aimlessly through the streets of El Paso without seeing any of the sights we'd hoped to see. It was time to eat and start thinking about heading on to Las Cruces where our hotel reservation awaited. We had lunch at Johnny Carino's country Italian restaurant, then visited a Barnes & Noble in the mall next door so Ben could pick up some more books to read on the drive. I decided that the visit wouldn't be a total loss if I could simply find a postcard of El Paso. I figured that we hadn't seen anything in El Paso that was picturesque enough to make a card of, so I was curious to see how the pros interpreted this smoggy border town. We tried a few likely places for postcards — a Shell station (where I tanked up for $2.77 a gallon), a casino and racetrack, a grocery store, a Holiday Inn — all to no avail. Finally Roni discovered a Hallmark store off the freeway. We stopped in and found a very small selection of postcards. Curiously they had three shots of Juarez, but none of El Paso. We continued west on I-10 and into New Mexico, where we stopped at a Flying-J truck stop that actually had a sizeable postcard rack. I was elated to find cards from Amarillo, Fort Worth and Dallas — one I couldn't find after a desperate search last year — but no El Paso. They had shots of Fort Bliss and UTEP, which is as close as it got. I suppose it says something when you can find images from Mexico easier than a shot of the hometown sights. Maybe there really isn't anything worth seeing in El Paso. Upon reflection, I think El Paso is a "working city" rather than a tourist town. There is a lot of industry here. Fort Bliss and the university are a major focus. The symbiotic relationship between the two countries at the border occupies the attention of the local businesses and service providers. Tourists are welcome, but there really isn't any reason to stay.

Our drive into Las Cruces was blessedly simple now that we were back to where we'd started our El Paso adventure. Just 32 miles between hotel rooms after I'd probably racked up more than that driving around El Paso. We pulled into a Dairy Queen for Blizzards to tide us over through the evening. We'd decided against a big dinner tonight because we were still stuffed from lunch. While we sat in the air-conditioned restaurant, thankful to be out of the 100-degree heat, we saw what we think was a roadrunner outside the window. It had the right beak and feet, and it never tried to fly but instead ran when startled. Reminds me of those pesky Steller's Jays we have back home.

We checked into Room 252 of the Best Western near the famous Mesilla Plaza. Ben was eager to go swimming in the large pool, so Roni took him down and I followed. We wound up spending about an hour there, I working on my backfloat and Ben trying to splash water on me. There was a pretty sunset tonight. Just too bad most of it was obscured by buildings and restaurant signs. We'll explore Las Cruces tomorrow.