Enough Is Enough

OK, Dawg lives about half of the year in Chiapas and travels all about that state often on very lonely back roads. There is much violence in Chiapas, especially along the Guatemala border that never makes the news so don´t kid yourself. Yet, I fell safer here than in the state of Jalisco where I maintain another home on Lake Chapala or Michoacan, a state in which we have often traveled. We have already changed plans to drive back to Lake Chapala from San Cristóbal de Las Casas this spring by driving up the Pacific Coast through Acapulco, Zihuatanejo and Michoacan and will be driving back over our normal route through Veracruz State, over the Arco Norte and through Queretaro. Enough is enough.

The violent thugs whose unspeakable crimes saturate the news have now, for the first time in ten years here, caused us to change plans for travel in the above instance and again this summer. We must be in Santa Fe, NM for a while this July and had planned to drive there from Lake Chapala going up via Juarez City and back through Baja to the La Paz-Mazatlan ferry but we are entrusted with the care of a local Lakeside child and also value our own lives so, while we are not very smart we are also not that stupid. We can save a significant amount of money by flying Interjet from DF to Juarez and back and rent a car in El Paso to drive to Santa Fe and return to El Paso.

If you readers don´t think this civil unrest bordering on civil war in Northern Mexico is serious and that I am overreacting, you drive up that chaotic corridor where law enforcement is a reallly bad joke and, assuming we get to Santa Fe in one piece after the flight and rent-a-car experience and you drive through Santa Fe with your head intact after having run the thug´s gamut through Chihuahua, we´ll celebrate together with a cold cerveza and congratulate each other for still inhabiting the planet. vel

Amigo, I think you have made a wise decision. I'm sorry that it means you will not get to stop for a visit in Lerdo. I'll have to call the mayor and cancel the plans for a parade and catfish fry on the town plaza.

Guess I'll have to pass on the caravanning with y'all Bamaboy, I like excitement...but I kind of like to be able to turn it off at the end of the day!

I have one good thing to report...a WHOLE bunch of folks from Jalisco,...Guad in particular have moved their culinary skills to Mississippi. We went to our favorite "eats" place last night...El Napolito and it was fabulous as usual. It's amazing to watch the progress in language skills of the young waiters.

Most of them don't go home as often as they would like out of fear. Our waiter last night (what a cutie pie!) told us that he got hit up for three hundred American mordida the last time he went down. They threatened to take his car and put him in jail for going over the speed limit. So it's not just Gringos they target for a "little bite". Of course his car has US plates so they figured he'd be flush.

Rolly wrote:Amigo, I think you have made a wise decision. I'm sorry that it means you will not get to stop for a visit in Lerdo. I'll have to call the mayor and cancel the plans for a parade and catfish fry on the town plaza.

Thank you for that kind thought and the accompanying quip, Rolly. We have been communicating over various internet boards, mostly Mexico Connect, in the past ten years, and I regret we will not be getting together in Lerdo this July for our first face-to-face meeting and my first meal prepared in your famous friend´s legendary kitchen. As in most human affairs, this drug war with its attendant nastiness will pass and, if we are all lucky, we will have that meeting sometime in the future before it´s too late for us all.

By the way, because of our INAPAM senior discount with its 1/2 off luxury bus fares, we find that we can take a luxury bus from Guadalajara to DF, spend a couple of days in that fabulous city, fly from there to Juarez, take a taxi to the border, walk across to El Paso, rent a car there to drive to and from Santa Fe and fly back to DF to then take a bus back back to Guadalajara and save a ton of money over the drive by private car from Lakeside to Santa Fe and back without having to take the risk of the drive through the killing fields of Durango and Chihuahua among other places en route.

Maybe when the powers-that-be in Mexico see their northern, largely rural, provinces turned into Afghani, Pakistani and Somali like outlaw realms similar to what Parisians used to call lawless parts of their city "miracle zones" back in the middle ages, infested with criminals and nere-do-wells and abandoned by all with a desire to live in civility, they´ll lower the axe and kick some butt. Until they do that, Dawg will hang out in lower and middle Mexico which seem, largely, to be doing fine thank you.

kipissippi wrote:Guess I'll have to pass on the caravanning with y'all Bamaboy, I like excitement...but I kind of like to be able to turn it off at the end of the day!

I have one good thing to report...a WHOLE bunch of folks from Jalisco,...Guad in particular have moved their culinary skills to Mississippi. We went to our favorite "eats" place last night...El Napolito and it was fabulous as usual. It's amazing to watch the progress in language skills of the young waiters.

Most of them don't go home as often as they would like out of fear. Our waiter last night (what a cutie pie!) told us that he got hit up for three hundred American mordida the last time he went down. They threatened to take his car and put him in jail for going over the speed limit. So it's not just Gringos they target for a "little bite". Of course his car has US plates so they figured he'd be flush.

I fully unnerstan Kippy, Darlin´:

Dawg never, ever presumed that the mordida truck only stopped foreigners. In fact, the kid, and perhaps, his father, who we planned to drive with from Lake Chapala to Santa Fe are Zapotecos from Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca and are pure olive skinnned indigenous Oaxacans whose families date back to the Oaxaca Valley beyond noted time. They are the first folks who alerted us way back in 2002 to the dangers of driving not just through DF but through the state of Mexico at all as they had been held up by crooked EDOMEX cops almost routinely when transporting Oaxacan rugs from Teotitlan to Lake Chapala. On our first drive from Lake Chapala to Teotitlan they had us drive through Queretaro, Pachuca, Tlaxcala and Puebla just to avoid any contact with the state of Mexico and its crooked cops altogether. Those days are over thanks to the Arco Norte Autopista but you don´t have to tell us how much Mexicans fear the crooked cops all over this land. You also need not tell us about the disgusting racial prejudice experienced by our olive skinned friends of Zapotista heritage when we pass official checkpoints with them in the car. No need to go into that more than just to say their presence always triggers suspicion on the part of authorities.

Now, as to Mexican/Mississippi food which Dawg now christens Mexissippi Cuisine, here is a Dawg created repast:

MEXISIPPI TACOS
Thin Cornpone Tortillas
Chitterlings
Collard Green Salsa
Fried Green Tomatoes
Tabasco Sauce

ACCOMPANIMENTS:
Jack Daniels Black Label Sour Mash Tenneseee Sipping Whiskey (rich Mississippians only - otherwise Early Times Two Liter Discount Bourbon from the nearest WalMart)
Dixie Cups for all
Mint Flavored Toothpicks
Fried Gritcakes dipped in Miracle Whip
Iced Tea for the Baptists invited because they are kin to Cousin Maybelle Hamilton yáll all hate but who is kin to Uncle Ralph Bob who owns the local Western Auto Store where yáll git yo charcoal briquetes

I'm afraid I'd have to have more than my share of that dandy Jack Daniels to even READ that list again!

Hey Dawg... Be sure to check out "The Shed" restaurant in Santa Fe...
http://sfshed.com/Home.html

We have now done some more research on the new Vivaaerobus non-stop flights from Guadalajara to Ciudad Juarez and are amazed at how cheap these flights are but at first we were concerned that the daily flight from Guadalajara to Juarez gets in a 8:00PM so our solution to that is to stay at one of several luxury business oriented hotels right at the Juarez airport rather than in El Paso as we had originally planned. We also figured that it would be a good idea to cross back into Juarez the day before the return flight to Guadalajara since that flight leaves Juarez early in the morning and that way we needn´t worry about probable congestion at the border when we cross. In fact, we have been told it is less of a hassle to walk across the international bridge there rather than take the airport shuttle into El Paso - we´ll see about that but it´s good to have an option when we get there. We figure it´s about a six hour drive between El Paso and Santa Fe so that should be easily accomplished if we spend the night in Juarez.

Let´s see, we´ve lived in the highlands of Chiapas and Jalisco for so many years that we haven´t experienced real heat since the turn of the century. Does it get hot in El Paso/Juarez in July?

Thanks for the restaurant hint in Santa Fe, Trucks. We haven´t been to Santa Fe for years and are looking forward to some New Mexico cooking. I suppose we may be in for some restaurant sticker shock after shopping at the San Cristóbal indigenous market for the past few months and eating like kings for peanuts. I remember when we last visited Paris and other parts of France to visit relatives a couple of years ago, we were so taken aback by food prices that we took photos mainly of food sticker prices rather than local public monuments. When was the last time you paid the equivalent of $40USD for a chicken? Granted, that was a fancy, high class chicken from Brest but that still seems a rather high price so we settled for smoked salmon for only $78USD per kilo.

Hot in July in El Paso? Surely you jest.

...Also, about half-way between ELP and ABQ is a wide spot in the road called San Antonio....Birthplace of Conrad Hilton and famous for its green chili cheese burgers...A real landmark http://nmgastronome.com/blog/?p=176