By Walter Agnew Moore II
8 May 2003

The Border: First time driving my own car across. A gazillion dollars to get liability insurance. I talked em down from their primo policy to one that covers me if I dent a motorcycle fender but still includes the rider that they THEY CALL A LAWYER TO GET ME OUT OF JAIL.

The Mexican auto and immigration forms were fairly reasonable, straightforward, and not too expensive. However, Mexico wouldn´t be Mexico without me parking my car in a clearly-marked "no parking" zone, jumping out in nice but sweaty clothes like an extra from Miami Vice, ignoring the man standing next to my car with the machinegun (technically, assault rifle), and then coming back to find the car still there and everything A-OK.

Pretty tame drive to Monterrey. Looks and feels just like Texas. Nightmarish once it got dark and I was winding through the mountains to Saltillo. No more night-driving. Stopped in first Saltillo hotel I saw just to get off road and got raped on the room-rate. Next morning realized I was only a mile away from an old back-packing hostel I'd stayed in before for about one-fifth the price.

The North Mexican Desert: All today I have driven through a bleak land that looks like God took all the chalk from all the world's class-rooms, crumbled it up and mixed it with sand, sprinkled some seeds from plants that dinosaurs used to eat, and then watered it, once.

No houses. Occasional road-side stands. No radio stations. Felt like forever to do the 300 kilometers to Zacatecas.

I did get to see a restaurant way out in the desert with an entire TREE growing inside it, it filled the building completely. The man said the tree and the restaurant were both 40 years old.

Everywhere that I have seen Army checkpoints, with lots of teen-aged Mexican soldiers in green uniforms, there have also been three or four really pretty teen-age girls there too, just sorta, hanging out.

Now I am in Zacatecas, the prettiest city I have seen in a long time. Old silver mining town in the hills, lots of Italianate buildings and arcades carved out of the local peach-colored stone. I am holed up in the Hotel Argento right across from the cathedral. Everything smells of perfume and incense. Teachers´groups are performing street concerts right around the corner from this internet place. There´s a bar down the way called the Nueva Galicia, and now that I look like a cleaned-up, showered extra from Miami Vice, I´m about to stroll down and get a cold one.

I hope Colima is half as cool as Zacatecas.