zimmers in texas

With much trepidition we set off for Mexico this weekend. We were a bit concerned about the safety of this venture as everyone we told about our trip reacted with "good luck" or "why would you want to go there" and even "if the police ask for money just give it to them don't argue". We did find one person who had actually lived on the US side of the border in a town called Del Rio who said it was a great town and we should definitely go but don't stay in Mexico late at night. Well we had a great time and will make sure we tell
everyone back at work.

We left on Saturday morning at about 8am and arrived about 4 hours later. Apart from a bit of trouble finding our way to the main street in Del Rio (the street called Main Street is not really the main street) we booked in to our hotel, had lunch and started off for Ciudad Acuna (city of Acuna for those bilingually challenged). There were 3 off us, as we took a friend from work who is a US citizen but not from Texas.
There are lots of border patrols but none of them are for people entering Mexico, only for those leaving. As we crossed over the Rio Grande (big River) we were the lucky 1 in 10 car that got pulled over and the boot searched. It reminded me of all the airport checks we seem to attract. Anway that only took about 2 minutes and off to see the sights. We parked the car and hit the main road ( this one was called Hidalgo or something like that who was a famous Mexican).
Meryl & friend G in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico.
Vanilla essence is very cheap in Mexico and we had several orders from all the people at work (including those who told us how dangerous our venture was), so our first mission was to buy 12 litres of vanilla essence. We managed to bargain the price down to $50 all up which is very very very cheap compared to anything in Australia. I can't imagine what I am going to do with a whole litre of pure vanilla essence but when it was just over $4 it was too good a bargain to miss. The silver is very cheap and there were lots of great jewellry shops. Everything was a bargain but unfortunately I had to keep thinking about getting it all home to Australia so I had to curb my buying habits. Glenn bought a 740ml bottle of vodka for $4.95 and the tequila was about $3 a bottle (cheaper than vanilla) but we didn't buy that. We were on a bit of a tight budget as we forgot to get much cash and if we used a teller we would have been given pesos and we didn't really trust the shop keepers enough to use credit cards. Anyway we managed to get everything we needed and even some things we didn't need but just liked.

Coming back over the border wasn't quite as easy as going in to Mexico. When we were asked if we were US citizens it would have been very easy to say yest and show our Texan driver's license but we felt that honesty was the best policy and told the truth. Of course we had to get out of the car and into the Border Patrol office where they looked up our credentials and sent us on our way.

We had a lovely Thai dinner on Sat night and then home for an early night. Sunday we went to "Whataburger" for breakfast burritos and then headed off to see the sights of Del Rio. The main attraction is a very large dam which traps the water from Rio Grande and the Pecos River. Again there are border patrols everywhere but only checking those travelling into Texas. We had to pass throught 2 of these and I accidently passed our cheque book to the first one as it is in a plastic wallet just like my passport. Thank goodness the trooper didn't think I was trying to bribe him. The second trooper couldn't understand why we would rather be in Texas than Australia. He was really surprised when he asked the question that he must ask a million times a day "are you US citizens?" and we said no.

All in all it was a great weekend and we made a killing on the vanilla essence.

Glenn is off to LA this week to catch up with his Aussie work colleagues and I will be batching. I think I might have to organise a girls night of go shopping. ( editors note - since when is a reason required).
Next weekend we plan to see some more sights of Austin and the weekend after we are heading off to South Dakota to see Mt Rushmore.