Nuevo Casas Grandes

We Tucson a bit after noon and it took all of six hours to get to this bustling little city of 60,000.  Although it’s not terribly far from the border — about maybe 50 miles as the crow flies, there isn’t much of a feel of a tourist town (although the hotel personnel appear mighty fluent in English).

I had read numerous times about the need to give the Mexican government a bond of several hundred dollars to guarantee that visiting motorists won’t decide to sell their cars in that country.  Somehow that vanished from my consciousness as D., C., and I crossed from Douglas, Arizona to Agua Prieta, Sonora.  So, after crossing the border (where six U.S. officials asked us if we had any guns with us and where we are going and, 100 feet later, a Mexican barely out of his teens and toting a nasty looking automatic weapon looked at our bags for two seconds), we stopped briefly for some roadside chicken and then blasted down Highway 2, which parallels the US border for maybe 90 mines.

At many points the distance between this desolate highway and fence is perhaps 100 yards.  Closer to Agua Prieta, it’s a more menacing looking steel affair. Once into the wilderness, it appears to be less formidable, and with less (or less visible) related electronics. In most cases the border there is a vast scrubby or grassy plain.  Anyone attempting to cross there would be easily seen by a helicopter or airplane — not that we saw any.  The only people on this lonely road were soldiers at two military checkpoints and truck drivers backed up for miles in a westbound direction, heading for the checkpoints and x-ray searches.  It was difficult to understand why they would have two such checkpoints on one enormous stretch of highway uninterrupted by any communities.  But there they were.  Plenty of economic value going down the toilet as these semis trickled through the checkpoints.

We finally got to Janos, a dusty crossroads, where a highway from the Ciudad Juarez met us us and we gassed up.  We were now only 40 minutes from N. Casas Grandes.  We trundled down the road for another 10 minutes and hit a customs checkpoint.  A trim female agent in a pony tail speaking Spanish asked D. for some papers and he produced the pile of insurance documents and copy of the Jeep’s title that C. had gathered and put in a large manila envelope.  No, she explained in fractured English.  That wasn’t what we needed.  There was something about a license…and then I remembered.  The bond for the car. There was another word uttered: detencion!

I got out of the car so I could talk to the female agent and her male associate.  Explained that we were only going to Casas Grandes, only 30 minutes away, that we were going to be there only two nights, and that I had an appointment at 9:00 the next morning with Doctor Eduardo Gamboa from INAH. The last part was a bit of a stretch.  I wanted to have an appointment, but never had a response from Sr. Paquime confirming it. The male agent calmly turned to me asked if I had $200. “No, I said.”  Tengo dos cientos dolares.  $100?  “Tengo solo cincuenta.”  He walked away a few paces, then returned, waved, and said it was okay to go.

With that victory under our belts, we headed to Nuevo Casas Grandes.  It was dusk at that point, so the details were a bit hard to make out.  It appears to be a prosperous community.  Indeed, when we checked into the Hotel Pinon, we were told they couldn’t honor our reservation beyond Sunday because a mob was coming in for some ceremony connected with construction of a new Soriana (a Wal-Mart style discounter).  Shows who’s really important here!

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