visits to Mexico and illegal crossings to the US

I (finally) bought a digital camera so that I could take pictures this last weekend. I drove to Tombstone to meet with one of my friends who is doing fieldwork on ephemeral streams. We met up with two more friends for dinner and explored historic Tombstone, which is kind of lame. But was my first old west town.

The next day we decided to drive to Mexico (about 1.5 hours away). Everything changed as soon as we crossed the border. No traffic signals, few stop signs and crazy drivers. We drove around forever before we could find a parking spot. Every shop near the border took US money and we ate lunch and shopped a little bit. The amount of English exponentially decreased by block as we walked away from the border. The men that ran the shops would try to haggle with me and sell me crap. Seeing as I hate to haggle and hate to buy things that I don't need, they were very disappointed with me. The town itself was pretty sad and made me feel like a rich American. We couldn't stay long due to a previous commitment and spent about 45 minutes waiting to cross the border. We didn't even have to stop on the way into Mexico. We were worried that they wouldn't let us in without passports (this trip to Mexico was not planned at all so none of us had them) but we were fine. The whole trip made me wish that I remembered more Spanish.



Waiting to get back into the US.












The next day two of us hiked up Miller Peak which is incredibly close to the border. We thought that it would be about 1500 feet of elevation gain but we were wrong and it was killer (around 3800 feet in 5 miles). An abandoned mine was along the trail and looked really cool. We also explored some more mines that were off trail.

One of the mines.

Cool mining equipment

I picked up some cool rocks that were full of copper but we didn't go in any of the mines despite the tempting warning signs:

All along the trail were discarded empty water/soda/beer cans and bottles along with clothes, backpacks and tin cans. Apparently this trail is a primary route for illegal immigrants to cross the border. If I were an illegal immigrant I would pick a much easier route but what do I know. Anyway, they just dump their empty bottles along the way making for a very garbage-covered trail.

Another mine with some discarded bottles

We didn't see anyone the entire time but, according to posts on www.summitpost.org, other people have run into illegals and border patrol. The summit views were incredible but we had to race down the trail to get to the car before dark. I was exhausted.

On the summit