Ok. Let's try and get some of this down in 1's and 0's format.

On the way down, jamming to the satellite radio, I run over a diamondback rattlesnake. Eastern? Western? I have no clue. All I know is that the sucker was/is fat. It kept crawling afterward.

(Anyone seen the expose' on North Korea on CNN? I'm watching it as I type this and it never ceases to amaze me. Google 'Camp 22' and read articles. Why the hell isn't someone doing anything about this?)


Anyway...

I get there, and everyone has to pee. Again. So we stop. Then sisinlaw has to go get money from Western Union. So we have to ask directions for a W.U. depot. Finally we get there. Sun is failing, and I hate driving in Mexico at night, after driving from Mississippi. Damn. We get the cash, and head down the last 4 miles or so. We get to the bridge, and the sun is in my face to the point where I can't see anything. Not the toll sign, not the signals, nothing.

I get there, and we hold our breath as we slowly head through the 'Nothing to declare' lane. The traffic light is green as we go through, and we breathe a sigh of relief. A red light means a document check and customs check. Anything made in China is usually taken, since there is bad trade blood 'tween Mexico and China. Yeah, for some reason the US like to give 'most favoured trade partner' status not to its neighbours, but to a semi-hostile Communist country on the other side of the world that likes to crush the genitals of political prisoners and...and...blah blah.

So back to the point. We begin to drive down Avenida Alvaro Obregon, which is like the main drag from the Puente Nuevo. God, it's different. The moment you drive across that damn bridge it's different, and I don't just mean the traffic. The buildings are different. It's like someone played pick-up sticks with buildings, signs, and power lines. It's fun. It's VERY random. People also drive like buttholes.

We get there, hugs, crying, kisses, and gifts are handed 'round. Sleep on the floor comes. Brother in law gets off work, kicks me, wakes me up and tells me to sleep on his mattress. He sleeps on a blanket. Don't flush that toilet paper! Into the garbage it goes, else the sewer backs up and there is a square pit under the sidewalk you can peer into outside that has turd soup boiling out of it. More cockroaches that Joes apartment in the thing. Good thing it stays shut most of the time. ..

Out of nowhere, women start coming out of this outside bathroom. Now, let me describe the house. It's at the base of a 4 lane thoroughfare. Concrete sidewalks, and concrete houses. The entrance to the multi-home dwelling is an iron gate that shuts. Inside, there are 3 apartment-houses in a boxed in 'courtyard'. If you can call a pink concrete room a 'courtyard'. Everyone's clothes washing machines are outside. You fill them with the hose, and when they are done washing, you put the washer's drain hose into a plastic PVC pipe that runs into the bathroom I'm mentioning. The door to this bathroom is several boards nailed together and also painted pink. Like saloon doors. It's the bathroom to the prostitutes' apartment. Yes, I said whores.

Our apartment had its own bathroom and they keep the place clean, but it's not a paradise. Don't drink that damn water! Can't you see it's brown?

I wake up, and can't remember what I did, but that night i had a few beers and sat out on the sidewalk waiting for my brother in law to get off work. He usually walked home around 12:30 AM. While waiting, I hear a woman, that, pardon my graphic description, is apparently getting nailed. She's moaning and barking and yelling. I, horrified, go into fat-kid mode and start hyperventillating. I start coughing gently hoping they'll shut up. And to my surprise they do. Finally my brother in law comes home and we immediately get sent out to the store to go buy milk for dengue-baby. It's dengue? I don't think so, but it's definitely some damned mosquito-borne illness that has her covered from head to toe in some red rash.

I have to finish this later.

Tomorrow: The Army Checkpoint and the Piedreros.