October 26 Drive to Creel

We loaded my Isuzu Trooper before dawn and headed south to a place on the border, somewhere west of Big Bend National Park. We were told to arrive at the border early to take care of paperwork and affidavits needed to take a car into Mexico. We were also told, "Never drive in Mexico after dark." On the road, Brenda and Michael talked about a Houston writer they both knew and had seen in a car chase on an episode off "Cops." The Houston police chased him through Montrose and down Allen Parkway, before he crashed into a government housing project. Brenda pointed out a big white plane on the horizon. A UFO or a spy plane, we speculated. She watched it for much of the forty miles between Alpine and Shafter, Texas. She remembered that a bizarre science-fiction movie, "Andrameda Strain," was filmed in Shafter. We decided to stop for a brief look around town. A sign on a hill read, "No trespassing," so we went to see what was over the hill. Muddy pits contained alligators. A man came to see what we were doing and, though he was a little annoyed, he showed us around his West Texas alligator farm. He pointed out entrances to historic mines and sites where the science-fiction movie was made. A little girl came running, telling us to come look at something she had found. In the intersection of two dirt streets in town, she had discovered a giant tarantula. This was all interesting, but it wasn't the place of our high expectations, Copper Canyon. We had spent four hours traveling only 60 or 80 miles in the Texas desert.

By noon we were crossing the long bridge over the border. Things would surely be different and more complicated on the other side. We had to unload our luggage, while officials decided whether or not to search it. Without looking at it, they sent us into Ojinaga, a town much larger than its American neighbor, to get some copies of some required forms. We didn't really understand the procedure, but were relieved to be legal and on our way. We tried thinking about kilometers, instead or miles, and frantically flipped through our Sanborns insurance guide to understand each road sign. Finally leaving town and on a highway we believed to be headed for Ciudad Chihuahau, we reached 85 kilometers per hour, when a sign not yet in our vocabulary read "Topes 500m." Before we could look it up, we were airborne. Then we knew, topes on Mexican highways were the granddaddy of all speed bumps. We immediately made our way up a range of tall mountains just a few kilometers inside the border. We passed trough a checkpoint, where we were required to show our proof of insurance, and shortly after, we found a turnoff to a deep gorge cut by the Rio Conchos. The narrow, twisting and turning road was exhausting to negotiate and I knew my prayers had been answered when I laid eyes on the long straight stretch across the Chihuahuan desert toward Aldama. Our most important discovery was the tienda, a little store usually operated by a friendly family ready to offer reliable advice. We stopped for a Coca in a glass bottle, which we learned to keep as a commodity once drained of the extra sweet cola. This explained why kids pour their cold Cocas into plastic bags before leaving the tienda, to save the deposit. We took a few minutes to enjoy the traditional siesta time in a big tree-lined park. This was old Mexico and we liked it a lot.

Chihuahua was near and the day was getting away from us, so we watched the highway signs closely, looking for the bypass around the city to save time. The loop around the south side of the state capitol city showed us a less romantic side of Mexico -- poor families seeking prosperity in the big city and living in concrete shelters. The hill side resembled a scene from a bombed-out Beirut neighborhood. We passed through Cuauhtemoc around 4:00 or 5:00pm, based on our limited knowledge of time zones in Mexico. It was a short distance to La Junta, where we would turn south toward the canyon, but we were slowed by a stretch of highway without pavement, and later by a bridge outage. The high clearance of the Trooper was handy as we rolled across open fields and down the bank of a river to meet the fallen pavement we would rely on to cross safely. l noticed an Indian man sitting by the collapsed bridge on the other side of the river. He was building a fire to prepare for the encroaching nightfall. Horse-drawn wagons on the highway created slow-moving hazards to impede our progress and made clear to us the problems with driving after dark. In the last light, a hillside cemetery outside La Junta glowed in warm pink and gold hues. Our fear of driving after dark, or simply underestimating the difficulty in reaching Copper Canyon, limited our opportunities to explore many beautiful sights.

Just past La Junta, we encountered another traffic slow down, this one more alarming than all those previous. A truck had rolled off the highway, over the steep embankment. We came upon the accident just as those who had rushed to the scene were making the sign of the cross. Our fear of darkness on the road was much greater, so we pressed on. There was finally no light left in the sky as we climbed up the foothills of the Sierra Madre toward San Juanito. We imagined this land to be very pristine, as there were no lights, reflective sign posts or guard rails. Our headlights periodically exposed jagged rocks and thick pine forests. The highway dissolved into rough cobbles as we entered San Juanito. Following the main street beside railroad tracks and along rows of parked carriages, we lost the trail and, finally, had to ask for directions -- the first real test of our limited Spanish. The road continued to rise and fall, and we found ourselves passing by a small town just after 10:00pm, in almost total darkness. We found a left turn into the town and down a main street covered with more uneven cobbles. We understood the place for budget travelers to stay could be found between two churches. We found such a place adjacent to the town square and a bold sign on a train station, which confirmed we were in "Creel." We knocked on a heavy wooden door. We knocked again and the door slowly opened. Mexican women were singing folk songs by candle light. We asked, "Margarita's?" "Si, bueno," a woman in a floral dress confirmed. There was no electricity, the women told us, because the town generator was turned off at 10:00pm. The women did not seem to know if there was a room available. They kept no records, so we went with them to several doors, knocking on each to learn if the room was inhabited. Michael let one woman carry his flashlight and she was delighted with it, so he loaned it to her for the night. We were soon in a vacant room with crisp pine walls and beds covered with thick wool blankets. The longest day of my life was over. NEXT PAGE