Down in the west Texas town of El Paso (with apologies to Martie Robbins)....

We left Tucson bright and early heading for El Paso, Texas. The drive today through the desert actually kind of reminded me of the Nevada desert, but the mountains seemed way more jagged. We actually passed over the continental divide in New Mexico and saw a completely different kind of cactus. We have been fascinated by the many varieties of plants of the desert. As we drove into El Paso, it was so amazing to see the huge border fences lining the Rio Grande right next to the freeway---on one side the U.S. and the other side Juarez, Mexico. We love Mexico and since we were just across the border, we decided that we would walk into Juarez to check it out. (Yes, we have heard all the news and were told that as long as we stayed in the tourist areas and were not there after dark, it was no problem.) We walked across a long bridge over the Rio Grande River and entered Mexico. There were Mexican guards at the border with guns and I also saw a pickup truck with soldiers in the back with guns pointed. Didn't feel like a safe place at all and as far as staying where the tourists were, we really only saw one man who looked like he could be a tourist. I don't know what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. We couldn't walk two steps without being approached to give money, buy something, etc. We didn't feel safe at all and there were no fun shops like we were used to seeing in Mexico. We headed back across the border. As we were waiting to go through the check point at the borders there were three buses parked and lots of young men being unloaded and escorted back across the border to Mexico. Made us both real curious to know what the story was behind these guys who appeared to have been in custody. We then walked around Old Town El Paso which actually felt like being in Mexico, but safer and then we drove around El Paso to see some of the sights. As we drove up one of the hillsides and looked back at El Paso and Juarez, we realized how close they are to one another. They just look like one big city, but you can see the fences and Rio Grande in the distance. It is a big brown line that divides the two cities. I thought about how wierd it would be to have a big fence that divided the town I live in.