The Mexican Connection!

Feb 1 -5, 2006
Only a five minutes drive from our site at Pilot Knob is the Mexican border and the border town of Algodones. There was lots of free parking along the road but the majority of people pay $3 to park in the Indian tribe’s parking lot. There were no immigration officials checking the walk-in crowd – only the car lanes.

Algodones starts right at the ‘line’, as the Mexicans referred to the border.
As the hordes of Americans / Canadians flocked through, the first sight was of hundreds of ‘dentist’ signs, up in the air, up on the walls, all along the street – everywhere you looked. You can get dental work done there for one quarter the cost in the US or Canada. We’ve had personal recommendations for a specific dentist. Apparently the conditions are sterile – all needles are still in plastic vacuum-sealed bags and are opened in front of you. I wonder where they train. Every few feet, we were bombarded with “wanna get some dental work? – come here.”

Almost as prevalent are the pharmacies selling prescription and non-prescription drugs and the optical stores with prices on prescription glasses one quarter of those at home. I had two pairs of computer/reading glasses done in designer frames for $120 total. There are glasses as cheap as $20 including an eye exam. I brought my own prescription with me so didn’t need the exam. And they’ll have them ready in three hours – how miraculous.

The usual array of goods were displayed in stalls lining the streets – jewellery, ceramics, glass ware, ornamental iron, blankets, hats, leather goods, clothing, etc. The vendors were well dressed and didn’t look at all hungry. I sensed they do a good business with the walk-in tourists.


We strolled the spotlessly clean streets of Algodones, dodging the aggressive merchants and noticed many sidewalk cafes selling ‘fish & shrimp tacos’. As we passed through the Café Pareira, I asked a couple of diners “so, are they good?” I guess I was a bit presumptuous because they mumbled hostilely what I think was a ‘yeah’, but at the next table “Betty and Howard” from northern California cheerfully voiced “They’re wonderful – why don’t you pull up a couple of chairs and join us” ----- So, we did! And we had a memorably pleasant lunch getting to know these two friendly strangers. The fish tacos are 75 cents each and the shrimp $1 each, so we had one of each and with a diet Pepsi each, out total bill was $5.
The tacos were ‘to die for’ to use a clichéd expression – a piece of deep fried white fish or three crispy fried shrimp on a soft taco shell with a covered Tupperware tray of condiments – chopped cabbage, red onion, tomato and jalapenos, cucumber, key limes quartered, a spicy salsa and a liquidy mayo in a squeeze bottle. Served with a bowl of crispy taco chips – Mmmmmmmmmm………..We decided to pick up my glasses the next day instead of hanging around, so returned for another feast of fish tacos.

Next year, I’m gonna’ get my teeth cleaned, my progressive and transitional lenses done and feast on the fish tacos.

It was the middle of the night when a sudden frightening roar shocked us awake. I stuck my head out of the little window beside the headboard of our bed to see a spotlight swiping over us – back and forth eerily with it’s intense white light casting a ghostly glow. A large helicopter hovered very low over our campsite ‘Thwack, Thwack, Thwack” the blades violently sliced through the still night air and the otherworldly light swung away, the copter shifted sideways and the elongated shadows of our chairs and tables appeared to move like cartoon silhouettes across the desert. Border Patrol! I felt so sorry for the poor little Mexicans who perpetually brave the heavily guarded and fortified frontier only looking for a better life and work in the US. The border is only about one mile from us at Pilot Knob and we were warned that we might see some wayward Mexicans sneaking past our motorhome in the middle of the night.

A ritual among the new Yuma-ites, is the ‘potluck’ meal. We participated two days in a row and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Social life is the essential part of a snowbirds retirement life and the, potluck’ means get-togethers are spontaneous, non-stressful, shared responsibility events. The first dinner was with a couple of other ex-CF employees, so it seemed a bit of a reunion with lots of reminiscences shared. The second was with our Pilot Knob compatriots – 12 of us altogether on a Sunday afternoon before Superbowl. One couple (K&J) originally from Denmark, made Frygedella a traditional Danish meat ball made with ground pork and onion. Fabuloso! We two relatively anti-social folk must be changing.

So, it’s been 10 days now in one spot and I think that’s as long as we can stay put in one place. We need to move along – back to the nomadic lifestyle. I don’t know that we will ever be content to just stay for a long period. It’s just not us. Maybe that will change with age. Who knows? So it’s off to Las Vegas tomorrow.