After crossing California and stopping in Phoenix for a couple of days, we moved to Tucson, in southern Arizona, where we went to visit a friend who studies there. With the Mexican border less than 100 miles away, we decide that we could also manage a quick trip. And we do it. We leave early in the morning, but it's already very hot, and before 11 we're at the border, in a city that on US soil is called Nogale and that just across the frontier turns into Nogales. The Americans don't care in the slightest who goes over there, so much so that at customs, which you go through on foot, nobody checks anyone. In ten seconds we're in Mexico, and the impact is tough. As much as Nogale is "Americanly" clean and quiet, Nogales is chaotic and dirty. Crumbling houses, streets full of people, dilapidated and smelly, traffic jams of cars and trucks, animals in the street, donkey carts, little markets.
In 200 metres, a whole world of difference. But the charm, though different, is the same. There are shops everywhere, because evidently the prices are lower and even Americans come here to shop, especially for medicines, because there are dozens and dozens of pharmacies. Despite the temptation we buy nothing, except light beer to our heart's content. First on the street, then in a little restaurant where we generously wash down tortillas and other typical dishes, getting the owner, a man who worked in California for years before returning to Mexico, to tell us stories of his life. It's lovely, in this scrappy and dignified taste of Mexico, where people laugh in the streets and lend you their sombrero for the obligatory silly photos. Towards evening we have to go back to the States, because the first available motel is far away, and we need to head back north.
While the customs officers check us and this time, since we're entering, much more carefully, I think back to Mexico, to the fact that for strange reasons I've never actually been there (once, with the ticket practically booked, a hurricane battered the Yucatan and I gave up because in Merida they were taking in refugees and it wasn't tourism time), to the fact that I'd so much like to see it for real. Sooner or later I will, I promise.
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