Breaking the Law at White Sands National Monument

On our way home from our poorly-understood/poorly appreciated expedition to Juárez last weekend, we stopped by White Sands National Monument for a couple of hours on Sunday morning.  It was cold, there was snow on the north-facing slopes, and the sand was frozen in places.  There were a few visitors, but the place was not packed.  We were traveling with the dogs, including one very energetic Brittany pup, Lucy The Lunatic.  She had spent much of the previous day being puppy-sat by our niece, Devin, in Las Cruces.  Devin was hoping for a cute, adorable puppy.  She got all that, of course, but she also got the burgeoning wildness of a Brittany pup who has just realized that she needs to run/play/eat kleenex/jump on sofas/etc.  And she needs to do all those things now!  White Sands does not allow dogs off leash or out of control.  Even on leash, Lucy is tough to control these days.  She's started getting some discipline this week.

Anyway, the place wasn't packed.  We took off into our own section of the park and promptly turned the maniac loose.  We walked maybe two miles.  In that same time, Lucy surely covered 20 miles.  It was amazing. First she's 200 yards to the left then 30 seconds later, she's 200 yards to the right.  She chased a raven at one point and disappeared behind a line of dunes several hundred yards distant.  I ran after her for a couple of minutes off towards her last known location.  Then, suddenly, out of the blue, a Brittany pup came running at full speed from behind.  I'm still not sure how it was possible for her to loop all the way around, unseen, and charge up behind me, but she did it.  Or her evil twin did it.  She and her twin are both evil.  Her core essence is made of black goop.

She slept all the way home.

Here are a few nice pix of White Sands NM and one video of us breaking the law at White Sands. Click on the pix to see full-sized.

Lisa and the dogs.

This picture epitomizes Lucy's White Sands experience:  High speed.

A picture without a dog!

Lucy prepares to dive off the edge of a dune.

Spook and Lucy explore.

Lucy in a sea of sand.

Here's a quick video of the lunatic running around:

A Video Ascent of Starvation Peak

Today, Lisa and I climbed Starvation Peak, a small butte/mountain near Bernal, NM.  This is one of my favorite winter hikes, since it is close to home and usually not snow-bound.  Plus, there are no rattlesnakes this time of year.  It is so-named for the legend of a group of settlers who were trapped at the top by a group of local natives.  Sometimes, you hear the story the other way around.  Our hiking companions are Jeri B and Brett.

Here's the view from the top looking back at Hermit's Peak:

Today's post will be a series of grainy videos that hopefully will give you a feel for our hike.  It was pretty windy, so you'll hear a lot of wind noise on the videos.

An Expedition to Ciudad Juárez

This past Saturday, Lisa and I spent the day in the Murder Capital of the Universe,* Ciudad Juárez in Mexico. Our mission on this excursion was to search for a hard-to-find Tabasco-style sauce called Salsa de la Viuda and a case of Bohemia Obscura, a Mexican beer. I’ve only found Salsa de la Viuda in a supermarket in Chihuahua City. I’ve looked for it extensively elsewhere in Mexico and the US without luck. Likewise, I’ve never found Bohemia Obscura in the US, even though the regular Bohemia is widely available.

Our trip caused considerable consternation amongst family and friends. We were uniformly advised against making this trip both by our experienced Mexico-traveling friends as well as by our friends and family who travel vicariously through the television. We heard a lot of emotional warnings about a “hail of bullets” and a “war zone” and “kidnapping.” In no way to do I mean to ridicule these points of view, as Juárez is clearly a dangerous place. Still, I thought a visit to the tourist zone just across the border was feasible. I don’t want to die. I swear.

Our plan was based on the the somewhat-informed notion that the violence in Mexico and Juárez is primarily among the various drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) and that tourists have not been widely targeted since the violence exploded to its current proportions. This doesn’t mean that is safe, of course. It’s just that it’s different from a typical mugging. The bad guys in Juárez, by and large, are not mugging people for their wallets. To the contrary, most of the murders Juárez are the result of a targeted hit against someone from a rival gang. Hits against innocent people are almost always some form of retribution against someone from a rival group.

 With this in mind, we restricted ourselves to the highly public and tourist zone during mid afternoon daylight hours on a Saturday afternoon. Even this zone has not been free from violence. Firefights among the warring DTOs have occurred in the central area of Juárez, though such events are not a frequent occurrence. Still, the possibility of wandering into such scene was our number one concern, although there was little we could do to protect ourselves aside from be vigilant for trouble.

Another issue that concerned us was that of kidnappings. I am well aware that countries like Colombia and Venezuela have ongoing problems with kidnappings for ransom. In typical cases, a person is kidnapped and held until the family can come up with the ransom money--usually a lot of money. As far as I can tell, this is not a common scenario along the US/Mexico border. We weren’t terribly worried about getting kidnapped for a ransom, but I suppose it could’ve happened. We specifically avoided taxis for that reason even though our quest for Salsa de la Viuda and Bohemia Obscura might’ve been successful had we taken a taxi out to a large supermarket away from the center of town. We just didn’t want to be trapped, helpless, in some taxi.  (I keep writing "we" when really I should absolve Lisa of all responsibility for my crazy plan).

The final big security concern was a plain, old-fashioned mugging.  For this reason, we carefully limited ourselves to well-populated public areas in broad daylight.  We didn't venture down any dark alleys.  We didn't walk for miles across town in search of our salsa or beer.  We were surrounded by hundreds of people for most of our time in Juárez, most of whom were Mexicans who were out doing their shopping just like us.

Somewhere at the beginning of this post I rated my knowledge of the border violence as "somewhat informed."  I make this determination because the mistake I made was that our plan was based more on my general knowledge of the border violence, but not on specific, up-to-date research.  I think I'm more in tune that your average US citizen, but I'm still far from being an expert on the subject.  I definitely should've read more before we went.  Upon returning to work on Monday, I was excoriated by my friend Cheryl for being such a moron as to go into Juárez .  She mentioned the recent case of a pair of University of Texas at El Paso students who were murdered in Juárez as well as other general cases of US nationals being murdered in Juárez.  I was unaware of these cases, and I definitely should've read about them before we went.  On further investigation, there have been a significant number of murders of US nationals in Juárez in the past year.  However, each case I investigated was more complicated than you might think.  In the case of the UTEP students, it turns out that there were not tourists at all, but rather US citizens who lived with relatives in Juárez and commuted to school in El Paso.  All the other cases I found had similar familial or cultural ties to Mexico/Juárez.  Likewise, in most cases, the murders were carried out in a deliberate assassination-style.  Thirty-six shells were used to kill the UTEP students.  It was not a random mugging.  I couldn't find a single case in which a typical pair of gringo tourists were gunned down in broad daylight in the center of Juarez in broad daylight.  This doesn't mean it couldn't happen, of course, but most muders carry the hallmarks of the warring DTOs.


While reading about the issue, I found this very interesting blog on Mexico's drug war.  I'm no expert on analyzing who is and who is not an expert on the Mexican drug wars, but her blog looks pretty good to me.  It's far more detailed, analytical, and less histrionic than most popular press reporting on the issue.  In one post, she analyzes the details surrounding a case where three US citizens were abducted and murdered in Juárez while attending a wedding in Juárez.  She writes: 


"Analysis: The groom's father has told authorities and the media that he has no idea why his son and the others were kidnapped and killed, but the immediate answer is that they seriously ticked off someone in a major DTO - likely either the VCFO or the Federation, since that's who's fighting in Juárez these days. Initial information indicated there was never a ransom request or contact made by the kidnappers; now we know why. This was a targeted hit against those four people, and although we may never know the exact reason they were targeted, it's most likely there was some sort of DTO link there.


I have no information at all that indicates DTO enforcers are just randomly kidnapping and killing people for no reason. As I've mentioned before, that type of action would represent a MAJOR shift in DTO tactics - especially if US citizens were being targeted just because they were citizens. Several dozen US citizens have either been killed in Mexico or become victims of cross-border kidnappings. But US citizenship doesn't mean you're clean and invulnerable, or that you didn't have DTO ties before you swore the oath. I hate to be so cynical, but unless I read something solid to the contrary, I'm going to assume that these US citizens in particular were either actively involved in the drug trade, were witnesses to something they shouldn't have seen, or were working as informants for a US agency. All three of these situations are likely to put someone - regardless of citizenship - six feet under in a Mexican dirt pile."


So in retrospect, the writer of this blog seems to agree with my basic notions about the violence in Juárez, i.e. that they're not targeting typical tourists, although it is quite possible to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I'm not saying it was a good idea to go.  I'm not saying it was safe (not even sort of).  But I am saying that we were not likely targets in the drug war.

In the end, we walked in knowing that many choices we make in life are fraught with risk. Riding motorcycles, skiing, having sex, smoking crack, eating fatty foods, etc. all have finite risks. In the case of Juárez, my real question is how great was the risk? Pretty much everyone we’ve asked has told us that we were off-the-charts crazy to have gone. I have written a letter to “Ask A Mexican” at the OC Weekly to get a balanced, informed, and amusing assessment of our level of imprudence. He has written back and says he will answer my question in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
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Well dumb or not, we did have a really great and interesting visit to Juárez.  We can give first-hand reporting that things are really extremely different there now than they were a couple of years ago. 


First off, there are no gringos there.  We wandered the markets in el centro for about five hours.  During that time, we saw exactly three other people who were obvious gringos.  This is a huge change from recent years when we would've seen hundreds of gringos wandering around on a Saturday afternoon.  Despite this, at not one moment did we threatened in any way.  Nor did we get any reaction from any Mexicans that implied that we were idiots to be there.  We simply met many friendly Mexicans.  Just like usual. 

We visited the tourist mercado.  We were the only shoppers in the whole place.  Most of the stalls were closed.  Again, this is a huge change from the past, when you would've typically found the tourist market to be buzzing and thriving with happy gringos.  The restaurants at the tourist mercado were open for business, but had no customers.  None.  The tequila shops had paltry pickings.  In the past, the walls of the tequila shops would've been lined with  hundreds of gleaming bottle of tequila.  The border dentists were almost all closed.  Not one taxi driver offered us a ride until we were within 200 yards of returning to the US at the end of the day.  There were beggars, but  many fewer than in the past.

We had lunch at La Nueva Central, a large, thriving restaurant not far from the cathedral and the buzzing non-tourist mercados.  On first glance, it looked a bit too cafeteria-like, but on closer examination, we realized that the place was absolutely packed.  Also, the pies in the window looked great.  It turned out to be a the best meal I've ever had in Juárez.  This isn't saying much, since most of the food I've had in Juárez over the years has been average at best.  La Nueva Central, however, was excellent and cheap, a great combination in my mind.  Lisa had queso fundido and I had huevos divorciados (divorced eggs).  For desert, we had a cream pie.  It was all super tasty, and the atmosphere was friendly and super-Mexican.  We got our money's worth.  We found out later that they've been open 24/7 since the 1950s.  Here are some pix:


Huevos Divorciados:


Pay de Crema:


Here is a picture of street performers who run into the street at red lights to juggle for a few seconds before asking for a little money.


We ended up not buying much.  The stuff in the tourist mercados don't interest me much.  In the non-tourist mercados, I enjoy just trying to figure out how people live down there--what they buy and why.  We did buy a few meters of oil-cloth to use as easy-to-clean table cloths during outdoor barbecues.  We also bought a bottle of Correlejo tequila at Marcos' request.  We ended up coming home with more pesos than we brought with us.

Lisa Shops For Oil Cloth:


A Strange Little Building Near The Tourist Mercado:


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An interesting post about the life in Juárez can be found here.  Life is hard for those who are stuck there with nowhere else to go.  One estimate suggests that over 100,000 homes have been abandoned and that 25% of the population has fled in the past two years.  There were over 3000 murders in Juárez in 2010.

* I found out later that Caracas, Venezuela might actually be the true Murder Capital of the Universe.  This might seem to be an easy question to resolve, but the Internet is sometimes more vague than you might like it to be.  Some boosters dubiously promote Caracas as Number One Most Murderous while others claim that Juárez has overtaken Caracas.

Sidra

Click on the pix to see fullsized.

On our most recent trip to Spain, I was very keen to have some sidra as soon as possible, having gotten a taste for it during our trip in 2009.  We took care of my craving on Day #1.  Sidra is the the Spanish word for cider. 

Here is Lisa outside of a Sidreria (i.e. a place that specializes in selling sidra) in the center of Madrid.  Despite its location in center a major tourist destination, we saw nobody but spaniards the two times we visited.

Sidra is a fairly low alcohol product.  Two can drink a bottle pretty quick, but not catch much of a buzz.  The sidra is poured into the glasses as pictured below to the depth of about an inch.  The reason that you don't pour a full glass is that the sidra is not carbonated like the hard ciders you find in the US or Britain.  To get the right flavor in the sidra, it is poured into the glass from over your head into a glass that you hold at your waist.  The splashing that occurs when you pour the sidra from such great heights serves to aerate the sidra in a way that is somewhat similar to carbonation.  The aeration is critical to getting the correct flavor.  Because of this strange technique, you only pour a little bit into your glass and then drink it right away.

Sidra is a drink from the northern part of Spain, especially from the province of Asturias.  In this poster on the wall in the Madrid sidreria, you can see blue flag with the yellow cross from Asturias.  The fellow in question is drunk, so drunk in fact, that he is pouring his sidra as I have described from above, except that he's got it backwards:  he's pouring his sidra from his glass back into the bottle.  He says, in very drunken Spanish, "I pour my sidra how I want to do it.  You got a problem with that?"  My sense is that serious drinkers of sidra drink so much that they can get pretty smashed despite the low alcohol content.

In this picture, taken in a bar in San Sebastian, the bartender is showing off his pouring technique by not looking as he pours the sidra.  This is not uncommon.  However, his technique is somewhat bad.  If he were doing it right, the mouth of his glass would be mostly facing the wall instead of the ceiling.  Note the legs of jamon hanging on the wall.

A year ago, we tried sidra for the first time in Llanes on the north coast.  We arrived there after a long day driving along the north coast of Spain.  Our efforts to find housing in the towns before Llanes were not successful.  The result was that we ended up in Llanes more or less by accident.  In 2009, we were particularly lucky to stumble into local fiestas in the various small towns we visited.  Llanes was one such place.  I think that the fiesta was that of the Virgen of Guia.  According to legend, the virgen saved from some fishermen from an unexpected storm during the 16th century. 

After a bit of a struggle, we managed to find a place to sleep despite the crowds.  Before long, we made our way downtown to see what was going on.  We saw many young men and women in traditional clothing, but we were too late to see their performance or parade.  However, before long, we started looking for sidra.    This was not hard, because it was everywhere.  At our first bar, we ordered sidra, and they told us we had to buy the whole bottle.  Not understanding how you drink the stuff, we declined and moved on.  A while later, we tried again, this time agreeing to a full bottle.  Here is our waiter pouring our sidra for us.  You can see that as compared to the "no look" showoff pictured above, our waiter in Llanes has his glass nearly perpendicular to the floor.  When held like this, the sidra splashes into the glass to aerate the drink in the traditional fashion.

A while later, Lisa poured some sidra also.  As you might guess, our efforts to pour our own sidra were a source of great entertainment among the locals.  We probably poured a lot of our sidra on the floor.  It's pretty messy, even if you're good at it.  The floor is sticky from all the splashing sidra.

It being a fiesta in Llanes, there was also a street dance.  My picture doesn't do it justice, but the crowd spontaneously broke into some traditional group dance while we were there.  The main drink at the dance was sidra, which was sold by entrepreneurs who walked into the crowd carrying cases of bottles of sidra.  These bottles were sold in great quantities to the revelers right in the middle of all the dancing. 

Robbie V, a  friend of mine from the Twilight Hours forum is also a serious Spain nut.  Upon hearing my interest in sidra, he wrote up a short post on the subject.  You can read the whole thing here, but here are his main points:

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"Sidra is alcoholic apple cider about the strength of beer. However, it is not carbonated. It comes in a wine size bottle and everyone shares one bottle until it finishes. A group also shares only one (or two) glasses amongst everyone. The barman will pour one drink and hand it to the first person. The person drinks it (leaving just a little in the bottom) and hands the glass back to the barman. The barman will swish out the remaining sidra to clean the glass for the next person. He (or she) will pour another drink and hand it to the next person. This continues until everyone has had a drink. The barman then leaves to pour for other tables and will return back in 10-15 minutes to pour another round. (note from floyderdog:  I have never seen it as Robbie V describes this, but my experience in the sidra world is way less than his)

The flavor of sidra only comes out when it’s infused with air. Thus, sidra is poured (thrown) from the bottle over your head and splashed into a glass you hold down by your hip. I thought I had a couple pics of me throwing sidra on my laptop but they must be stored on a drive back in the states. I did a quick Google search and found a good photo of throwing sidra:  http://www.fenichel.com/sidra.shtml
(actually, I just poked around this guy’s site and he has some GREAT photos of Asturias, Spain)
Asturians drink so much sidra (a group of 6 people will easily drink 20 bottles of sidra throughout an evening ) that you rarely have a bottle that’s more than a month old. However, many friends have told me that sidra could theoretically keep for 2+ years. Finally, sidra purists say that any sidra taken out of Asturias will NEVER taste as good."
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I have yet to find a source in the US that sells authentic sidra.  Bummer.

It's Snowing in Northern New Mexico

While the national news focused on all the snow in Chicago last week, we've had a quite a spell of our own.  Minus 15 degrees.  Three solid snowstorms in the past week with six fresh inches in the past 12 hours.  A low of zero expected tonight.  No natural gas in many towns in the Rio Grande valley for the past several days.  Busted pipes all over the place.  Friends' trucks high-centered on snow drifts in their driveway.  Frozen hair.  Lucy being reduced to eating frozen poo in the backyard instead of the fresh stuff she prefers.

Here are a couple of pix of Lisa and the dogs playing in the snow.  They're lousy cell phone pix, but you get the idea.  You can click on them to see them in all their grainy glory.