December 10

Today I feel I am in Mexico. Alone. Rode through a countryside much like a lot of the deep south - huge farms and small houses along the road. Lots of dogs coming out of their yards to bark at me, muddy driveways, dilapidated buildings, and tiny "Mini-super"s with Corona Extra signs on them.

There are bus stops every five kilometers or so, and I rested at one of them. A young man was leading a horse along the ditch, watching me, and when he had put the horse in a corral he came over, and asked, in English, where I was going. His English was very good, and I told him so; he said he learned from watching cartoons with his cousin. He was very friendly, and we talked a few minutes, mostly about where I had come from and how long I had been on the road. He comes from Michoacan.

The weather was cool and cloudy, but dry, and I made pretty good time. At about 1:30 the sky cleared and I came to the top of a hill and saw Mexico for the first time. To the east was the Sierra de San Carlos, and to the southeast the Mesa de Solis. Real mesas. Blue in the distance. At once there were no more huge farms, but grassland that might belong to large ranches. The roadside, an the narrow, shoulder less 10km stretch into San Fernando, was messier with trash and puddles, and the homesteads were closer together, and there were just as many dogs or more, but the yards were clean and fenced with an effort, usually successful, to make them attractive. A fellow, a passenger in a ½ ton truck, yelled something at me when he passed, and then the truck stopped 200 m up the road and he got out and waited for me. He was drunk, and a little threatening, but we talked, again about where I was going. He too spoke English, a little, and when I told him I was going the San Fernando and the Victoria in a couple of days he asked if I had primos there. We shook hands, movement style, several times and he cautioned me to be careful.

San Fernando is a good-sized town. Not as big, according to the maps as Valle Hermoso, but it feels bigger, and more like a town. I wandered around a little, looking for a hotel and getting misdirected and stared at, and yelled at some more. Narrow streets with houses and shops with common walls between them, lots of tequilleras and taquerias, and a big cathedral with domed bell towers. A guy riding in a van that drove beside me for 50 meters or so wanted to talk, and he told me about the Hotel American, where I am typing this, in a room worse than the one I stayed in at the Hotel Canada in Valle Hermosa. And this one cost me ten pesos more but is still cheaper than most of the campgrounds I've stayed in, but it has a shower and a sink and a toilet and a bed, and a radio playing Mexican music in the lobby right next door. I need to get to a restaurant, and I'm a little, just a little, leery of leaving my stuff (especially this machine) here and of going out.