El Paso and Juarez

Hola amigos!  Last week I traveled down to El Paso and Juarez for work to visit one of our suppliers.  A place where hatch peppers abound.  That reminds me of a song.  Anyway, we stayed in a hotel in El Paso and went across the border to Juarez for day trips.  El Paso and Juarez aren't known for being the safest places around, but we didn't experience anything crazy.  But we weren't in the tourist part of town.

Actually, it was quite enjoyable.  The weather was in the 70's and 80's.  We ate good food (including lots of good Mexican food).  The hotel had a good breakfast.  I wasn't terribly overworked - I even had time to catch some rays by the pool for an hour.

That's really about all I have to say about that except sharing a few pictures.

In case you didn't know, El Paso is in a desert.  But....it's the only big city in Texas with mountains according to what I read on the jetway.

We ate here one night - it was very delicious.  It's actually east of El Paso in Faben out in the middle of nowhere.  Like for real.  We thought someone was leading us out to the boonies to steal our stuff and beat us and leave us for dead.  But there were still lots of people there on a Thursday night.

One of the best filet mignon steaks I've ever eaten.  I know I went wimpy since it was only 6 ounces, but I wanted to sleep comfortably that night.  I passed on the 2 lb T-bone steak (The Cowboy), but a couple of the guys we ate with went for it and actually finished it.

We ate here one night too.  They have delicious enchiladas.  With hatch peppers and verde sauce.

 

L&J Cafe - the old place by the graveyard.  It was a 45 minute wait to get a table even at 7 PM.

 

Look!  There's already a wall between Mexico and the U.S.

Speaking of a wall, I know Donald Trump is saying he's all about building a wall across the whole border.  I kind of doubt he's truly serious.  He has some business that involves construction, and I think he probably knows it's unrealistic.  Personally, I think it's a waste of time and money to try to build a wall across the entire border.  Have you been to the Berlin wall museum in Berlin?  There's a whole section of the museum dedicated to stories about how people escaped East Germany and escaped the wall.  Crazy things like people hiding in the engine compartment of a VW bug.  Human creativity, particularly in desperate times, will find a way around or through a wall.  That's my two cents on that.  Now maybe in large population centers like this it makes sense to screen out the people who aren't truly desperate or screen out the drug runners.  A wall across the entire length of the border though is silly.

On the way from Juarez to El Paso, we walked through customs so the van driver could take the quick route through the traffic.  It was kind of fun.  There is a $0.40 tariff to walk on the pedestrian bridge.  It seems like underkill.

Seen at the airport.  This cracked me up.