Monterrey for two nights

Driving in Monterrey was our first experience with big-city driving in Mexico. It was pretty hard to navigate, and there was one point when we circled the same pattern of blocks four or five times before making the correct turn to get where we wanted. Our hotel room was small and dark - it had a big picture window, but it faced directly onto a brick wall with about a foot of space, and it had dark curtains that were backed with a heavy plastic sheet. But, it was a step up from the first hotel we went into, which was charging not by the day, but by twelve-hour blocks. We would have had to pay four times in order to stay for the planned two days!

At first Monterrey wasn´t treating us very well. I got a bit sick and we had to stay in the hotel room all night watching The Lord of the Rings on TV and eating chips and avocado for dinner. But the next day we were able to see the downtown pedestrian zone (a great place to get away from the unfamiliar driving style), the Museum of Mexican History (very little mention of the affects of colonialism, or the US-Mexican war), and the Museum of Modern Art (three travelling exhibitions - one beautiful, one scary abstract, one by Henry Moore; no permanent collection).

We ate dinner that night at a little cafe that served vegetarian lasagne, which was a treat in a place where vegetarianism is almost non-existant. After a second night in the dark room, we left for a long drive through the desert to Zacatecas.

A new beginning in Nuevo Laredo

We crossed the border into Mexico around the 10th of December (sorry our blog is so out of date!), into the supposedely booming border town of Nuevo Laredo. Its amazing how much things change once you cross an imaginary line. We were worried about passing through customs (in spanish), but didn´t need to be. You don´t even have to go through customs until you´re through the free trade zone, which extends about 100 km into Mexico along the U.S. border (once we got there they just waived us through without even stopping our car anyways). We needed to register our vehicle, but nobody asked us to do so. It seemed to run on the honour system, and we had to follow sporadic car registration signs for kilometers before stumbling onto a massive complex where you can register your car and pay the tourist entry fee.

Nuevo Laredo itself is an interesting city. It is supposed to be an example of the miracles of globalization and free trade, booming with foreign based industries since NAFTA and the creation of the free-trade zone. And indeed, a seemingly endless variety of trucks can be seen passing back and forth across the town, carrying the products of the maquiladores accross the border. But the money must be coming in-to and out-of town as quickly as the trucks, for they still cannot afford to fix their narrow sidewalks, which are pock-marked by gigantic pot-holes, or maintain their public buildings.

Walking the strip in front of the border is intense, and with every step another disreputable looking gentleman waits,with broken english, eager to sell you everything you might want (and a lot of things you probably don´t), from prescription glasses and dental operations, to viagra and other pharmaceuticals, or even marriage ceremonies and divorce proceedings.

We stayed one night in a small but reasonably comfortable hotel, before heading out the next day for Monterrey.

Lost in Lost Maples

After leaving Dallas, we headed to Lost Maples State Park, named after a small population of Big Tooth Maples stranded in Texas Hill country ever since the last ice age. Unfortunately, the road we were supposed to turn off onto didn´t exist (or at least we couldn´t find it), and we had to drive an hour past it and circle round behind it on a gourgeous backroad through the middle of nowhere. Eventually we stopped to ask for directions at one of the oddest gas stations I´ve ever seen, which was crawling with chickens, roosters, peackocks, cats, and good old fashioned texas charm. Eventually we found the park and managed to set up camp before dark. It was so beautiful there we decided to stay for an extra day in order to hike all the park trails.

For breakfast the next morning we drove into a pretty bizarre little town, where prisoners dressed in white and black striped jump suits (straight out of a bad prison movie) were washing the sherriff´s car, and every single male in the local diner was dressed in camouflage (even little boys of six or seven!) . Not too mention the fact that the diner´s walls were studded with the stuffed heads of every concievable mammal that is large enough to hunt with a shotgun (including a poor buffalo). But despite feeling a little bit out of place and at odds with the local values (a nearby store had a sign comparing advocates of gun registration to Nazis!), we had a great time exploring the park and watching the sun set over the texas hills. After two nights in the park we set off for the Laredo border crossing into Mexico...

Serendipity on the Ohio River

After leaving Chicago we headed due south through Illinois, hoping to make it to the fabled 'Land Between the Lakes' national park, nestled between Lake Kentucky and Lake Barkley on the Kentucky/Tennessee border. We decided to take a scenic shortcut, which, of course, turned out to be a long cut, through small-town Illinois. By the time we got to the Illinois-Kentucky border, the sun had set and dusk was settling down into night. We reached the top of a hill, just before the border, and realized that the road we were following dissapeared into the Ohio River!

We thought we were going to have to stop for the night and retrace our steps in the morning, until we saw a lone figure standing on the tiniest ferry I have ever seen. Worried that the ferry might have finished running for the night, or that the next run might not be for hours, I cautiously approached him. "Is there another ferry tonight?" I asked.

"Yep" he replied in a southern drawl.

"When is it leaving?" I asked.

"I reckon right about now," he answered. "We ain't got no schedule, we just leave whenever folks show up."

Scarcely able to believe our good fortune, we drove aboard and stood at the bow as the dimunitive ferry began its short, but essential, ride across the river. It was a clear night and the stars were reflected beautifully in the inky darkness of the Ohio river.

We made it to the Land Between the Lakes that night, but it was a little too late to camp, so we stayed in a motel and ate a dinner which almost certainly came out of a box at the local diner. The next day we drove through the park, after stopping at the Kentucky Dam, and stopped for a quick hike at what we thought was a hiking trail but turned out to be a tiny graveyard in the middle of the woods. Walking through the elaborate graves, most of which were circa 18th century, we noticed that there was another graveyard behind the graveyard, with a different name and a different fence. All these graves were marked with tiny stones that looked like bricks, with no inscriptions or anything. I imagined it was a slave graveyard from before the civil war.

From there we drove on to Little Rock Arkansas, where we were taken aback by how little it actually is! For a state capitol, and the biggest city in the state, it is incredibly small. It took forever just to find a restaurant that was open. It was the most depressing place we've been so far. From there we drove to Dallas and stopped for lunch. Until then, we hadn't had to drive through any snow or rain at all. But just when we rolled into Dallas, an ice storm broke out, blanketing the city's streets with snow and ice. Dallasites, unnaccustomed to such weather, didn't know how to drive through it and the city's freeways were backed up for hours! Eventually we made it to Amy's Great Aunt's house, in Fort Worth, where we recuperated for a day thanks to the gracious hospitality of Mary and Ken. Tomorrow we're leaving early for San Antonio, and hopefully hitting the Mexican border the day after that. Stay tuned for more adventures!

The Windy City

After a quick dinner with my friend Katia at Ann Arbor's infamous Fleetwood Diner (small, smokey, bad service - and not as cheap as we'd been told!), we left for Chicago to stay with our friend Owens. Owen has a beautiful apartment that he shares with his sister. They were nice enough to let us invade their space, even though Owen had just returned from a trip to India the day before, and his sister was in the middle of studying for her exams...and Owen even gave up his bed to us in favour of the couch!

The next morning Owen directed us to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. We spent a lot of time there in an exhibit featuring a German submarine that had been captured by the US Navy during the second World War. I had some very emotional responses to that exhibit. Whenever I hear about war, I find myself thinking about the situations of individuals, rather than any larger conflict. I just can't discount individual experience, especially in such horrific circumstances. I also find myself getting frustrated with stories of heroism, as it seems to me to be so much military propaganda. I dislike the insidious undertones that are applied to the apparently routine actions of those seen as enemies. I think it negates the lessons of past conflicts to continue describing them in terms of winner&loser, right&wrong, goodside&badside. I think it is necessary to discuss war as the horror that it truly must be for everyone who experiences it, and only from there can we begin to ensure that no one need experience the same again.

We also got to visit the prenatal exhibition, with preserved fetuses from varying stages of pregnancy. Most of them looked like little aliens, really. A sign had been posted reassuring visitors that all the specimens had died of natural reasons. No aborted fetuses need apply. Really, what would be so wrong about using any specimens to further education, no matter how they became available? Abortion can be - may often be - a responsible choice, and for me it seems petty to exclude public education from the realm of possibilities that can result from a woman's choice not to become a parent.

I guess that's all from me, for now. I hope no one minds my ranting. Comments are always welcome.
xo, Amy

The big apple and beyond

Well, we're finally on the road. After hurriedly packing up all our stuff, we left Toronto on Wednesday, November 30th. We decided to head to New York first, where one can procure a Brazilian Visa in 24 hours. However, by the time we got out of Toronto it was far too late to make it to New York so we decided to stop in Ithica, where my friend Liz and her husband Devon live. We crossed the US border at Niagara Falls. The guard at the border didn't seem to like the looks of us (I think he didn't like the looks of Bryan's planting shovel in the trunk) and stopped us for a search. After waiting for about a half hour, two different guards arrived to search our vehicle. After one look at us they laughed and said 'who made these folks pull over?'. They went out to our car, glanced in the window, said 'there ain't no drugs in here' and sent us on our way. I was quite relieved as I've been pulled over for hours crossing the US border, and was once even accused of being a car thief. It must have been my reassuring female presence that made them let us go.

We made it to Ithica, after getting turned around a few times. But we weren't there long as we had to leave at 6am in order to make it to New York City by noon, when the Brazilian Consulate closes. We made it to Manhattan well before noon but by the time we found a place to park and found the consulate, we were a few minutes too late - the New York traffic was daunting at first, but we quickly caught on to how things work...really everyone just goes where they want to, and you gotta hope you don't get hit in the process! We came back the next day and submitted all our paperwork only to find out that, since we are entering Brazil by land from Venezuela, we need to apply for our visa in Venezuela! It would have been nice to know before hand but the consulate never answers its phones and the website didn't mention it. So we rushed ourselves to New York for no reason at all!

But we enjoyed New York anyways; we spent two days and one night (in a seedy hotel in Queens where the pictures were cemented to the walls and the television had the name of the hotel branded on the side twenty-three times - to prevent sale after theft?), and got a chance to walk in Times Square at night (very overwhelmingly bright), stroll through Central Park and Grand Central Station, and spend a few hours in the NY Museum of Natural History exploring everything from the secrets of the cosmos to the wildlife of the african savannah.

From there we drove to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and stayed with my friend Linda for a night. In the morning, she read our fortunes and sent us on our way to Ann Arbour, where we stayed with my friend Rob and his wife Erica. So far we've driven about 2000km -- only 48 000 left to go!