August 13-15
Nothing but fields on the way to Mexico. The dollar stores and Whataburgers disappeared once we got off the main drag, but then even the downward-spiral mom-n-pops began to peter out the further we drove south -- the income tax shacks (one right next to a tuxedo rental place, I noticed), the bars and package stores, the places to buy fireworks or guns, the various cheap looking gathering holes ...and then there was nothing but sorghum, sugar cane, and cotton for miles and miles.
The Boundary
There's a bridge across the Rio Grande. You pay a quarter (in a turnstile) to go across to Mexico. Nobody cares if you go to Mexico -- there is no Mexican Customs official there to rough you up or ask you why you are visiting his country and how long you wish to stay, or to stamp your passport. (Instead, you will be set upon by roves of young men with business cards on the street corners, peddling cheap dental care, but they won't be trying to keep you out of Mexico either.)
The Mexican Side
The shops over the border are great cheap kitsch -- t-shirts, serapes, huraches, embroidered dresses, knockoff purses, margarita glasses, candles shaped like cacti, kokopelli wall hangings, gag gifts, and of course, all the religious reliquary you could handle.
It's thirty-five cents in another turnstile to get back into the US, and you have to go through a little American Customs office. I brought my passport, but the officious dude still asked me if I was a citizen. It must be an automatic question that they ask everyone, no matter what they say. I thought of all the domestics who must walk through there every morning and tell seņor that they are just going across the border to go to mass.
Oh Mexico, I've never really been but I'd sure like to go....