You can’t just fly out Thursday into Mexico and back again Friday to get some prescription drugs. That would make your trip too short. It costs an extra $300 to do that. No, you must stay over into Sunday. You pay for this discount by having to stay in Mexico several more days.
Of course, you could spend most of your time in cosmopolitan Yuma, Arizona on the border, where I flew to from Phoenix. But it’s about the same thing. Nowheresville, nothing to do, hot as blazes and a foreboding and ugly countryside. The forecast for this Sunday, May 6, is 107 degrees.
The mission is simple and straightforward: buy $8,000 worth of prescription drugs for me and Dottie, both uninsured, at a pharmacy just across the border that charges 85 percent less than the inflated costs of America’s Big Pharma racket. They sell the exact same drugs. Same package, same company, same manufacturer.
The “Purple Pharmacy” in Mexico.
They say this is perfectly legal. And they say crossing back into the USA with all these drugs is no problem. We shall see.
My reward for six hours of flying each way is to experience my first trip to Mexico. As you can tell from my first sentence, it hasn’t exactly gone the way I had imagined.
Other than walking past a funny sign at the border that said, “Guns are not allowed in Mexico,” the first few minutes of my Latin American adventure actually went pretty well. The big “Purple Pharmacy" that sells just about everything Americans need was about 30 steps across the border. The employees spoke good English, very friendly. I bought everything I needed for $1,016.00, which sounds like a lot, but not when you realize that would have been one month's worth of our Obamacare premium (had we signed up), with only a $19,000 deductible. I kid you not.
I travel light. I have a big leather satchel briefcase with a handful of clothing items, a couple books and a laptop and a few cigars. Everything I need in life. On one of my three trips to Ethiopia, I only took this satchel. However, when I bought all the meds at the Purple Pharmacy, I now had two big purple plastic bags full of drugs in my other hand. No more fancy-free Dean. I now had to travel carefully and strategically.
Los Algodones just across the border.
My phone stopped working. That means I have to find some wifi so I can figure out my method for getting to the large city of Mexicali, nearby my current town called Los Algodones, just across the border. I had booked a hotel in Mexicali. But as I started walking the streets and asking around for a coffee shop with some wifi, I learned lots of things very quickly:
Mexico reminds me a lot of Ethiopia:
Lots of people everywhere on the streets looking to sell you something
A similar semi-arid terrain
Lots of poor shacks for poor people mixed in with your occasional personal or public palace
Hot
I also quickly saw the differences. Mexico doesn’t have Ethiopia’s big redeeming value—a glorious 3,000 year Judeo-Christian heritage. They also don’t seem to drink much coffee. Wifi could not be found. More practically at the moment, most people don’t speak English.
As the ugly American, I was a little shocked by this. Most of my traveling has been in Europe and Africa, where most everyone speaks English. Some Europeans don’t speak it so willingly, but Ethiopians of all stripes, rich and poor, are darn right enthusiastic about engaging you in the King’s English.
So now I found myself asking people questions on the streets of Los Algodones, but not having much luck. One guy at the liquor store across the street said the Purple Pharmacy actually had wifi but no coffee. He sent me five blocks in one direction for coffee and wifi. They had coffee but no wifi. I came back to my original Purple Pharmacy destination, because wifi was more important now than coffee. As it turned out, the Pharmacy had coffee but no wifi. I asked around, and no one could help me.
With no phone service, and with the inability to get help from other people, wifi became rather crucial. I just started walking around, both hands full of big bags, hot as hades. It was easy to see why all those Westerns were made that involve people roaming around in the desert about to die of heat and thirst. And it was only 9 am. I passed a couple of guys who tried to sell me belts and hats and other trinkets. I told them I needed wifi.
“I can get you wifi for twenty dollar,” he said. “For a whole year.”
“I need it for five minutes.” I said, and kept walking.
A lady near to them, maybe their sister, but an angel by my standards, pointed to a restaurant: “They have wifi.” The two men sneered at her.
This little spot met all my needs. I had Houvos Rancheros. It was sort of mediocre—I’ve had better in the states. But I found some electricity and surfed to find out how to get to Mexicali, the capital of that state in Mexico, Baja California, and a city of one million, a thriving cultural center, or so I had been informed by the internet earlier in the week.
Two bits of bad news.
1. My earlier intel said Mexicali was 4 or 5 miles away. No, it’s 60 miles away. I’m not sure how I goofed that up. However, this dilemma could be easily solved by just deciding not to go to this Baja mecca at all and stay put in Los Algodones.
2. Second bit of bad news: my deadline for canceling the hotel in Mexicali had past.
Inattentive bus driver.
So, since I had already bought a hotel in Mexicali, I determined to properly finish the two extra days of Mexican punishment for my flight discount and asked around where to catch the bus. By the park, someone said in broken English. As I walked to the park, by George a bus pulled up right at that very moment. I asked the driver several times if it went to Mexicali and he ignored me. But a kind old man behind me told me it did.
I got on, and he got on behind me. I didn’t know what it cost, and the driver couldn’t speak English. The kind old man said it was $3.00, about $17 less than I was expecting. The driver broke a $5 bill and I gave my second angel of the trip the other $2.
Mexicali is 60 miles away, but it takes the bus two hours. Whatever. I was in for the long haul. I’m here to experience Mexico, and observing the vast countryside is part of all that.
Well, the countryside sucks. And the bus has no air conditioning. I was rescued from all this by listening to “The Civil War” by Shelby Foote, which I had smartly downloaded to my phone and therefore was not dependent on wifi or cellular.
Beautiful Mexican countryside.
I also recalled that my great grandfather, Clarence Arnold, had in fact moved to Mexico for a few months to consider making a life there. His family of eight had been in Arizona for several years where he killed 44 rattlesnakes in his first year on his ranch. The landscape there and in Mexico all looks kind of similar. Arid, desert and sand, mixed in with brush and a few palm trees. Absolutely uninhabitable mountains looming on the horizon. I don’t think you could camp in this terrain. I’m not sure how Clarence did it or why he ever really wanted to.
Great Grandfather Clarence Arnold and family on his Arizona ranch near the Mexican border.
As we neared the Mecca of Mexico, it started to more resemble the urban sprawl of Atlanta, but dingier. McDonalds, Starbucks, Walmart and Sam’s were all represented. The bus driver dropped me off and I walked across a four lane highway with all my bags to the Motel Marche that I had repurchased at a price higher than I wanted—but felt like risk taking was a bad idea for my first night in Mexico.
Good ol’ McDonalds.
The Motel Marche apparently is the drive-in theater version of lodging facilities. I walked around several times looking for a lobby or receptionist and could not find one, only little roads and driveways and garage doors that looked like storage bins. As I walked around the third time I heard a voice over a microphone that sounded like Darth Vader admonishing me. There to my left was some kind of window with a drawer, like a drive thru bank teller. Someone was calling out to me in Spanish. However the window was like a mirror, I could see nothing. We started shouting at each other, in two different languages. She opened the drawer and asked for things. I started showing her confirmation numbers on my laptop. It was getting hot. I was getting hot.
Drive in hotel. Pedestrians go elsewhere.
Darth Vader window.
Finally, some young Mexican girl appeared around the corner, like the little man in the Wizard of Oz, and we communicated by gesture. After viewing my license, she presented me with a bill, higher than I had agreed to, and I gave her a $100 benjamin. It took her several minutes to give me change . . . in pesos. And that was it.
“Number 3” she said, indicating my room number.
“My key?” I asked. She shrugged her shoulders (at least I figured she did, because I couldn’t see anything behind the window). I finally figured out that they don’t do keys. This is all very interesting, because I did need to actually GET INTO THE ROOM. Finally, she walked over with me to #3 and let me in. I thanked her very much and gestured the sentence, “How the hell do I come and go with no key?!” and she gestured back that I shall come back to the Darth Vader window every time and go through the very easy process of getting them to let me in.
The room itself, however, was a contrast in extremes. While the countryside is awful, the room is elegant like Scarface’s mansion. As modern and chique as they come. However, it took a few lessons to get the TV turned off, and despite having four wifi modems, the girl couldn’t get any of them to work, and they had to call in another lady to give me a pirated passcode from a neighboring wifi system.
Motel Marche
Having enjoyed a couple hours of refreshment and wifi regrouping, I embarked on the heart of my purpose in Mexicali—experiencing Mexico. I told a cab driver to take me to the historic district for tourists. He looked at me strangely, either because he did not understand my English or did not know what an historic district for tourists would mean in Mexicali. Probably the latter. When he took me to the spot, he asked me if I wanted to be dropped off there. It didn’t look like Mecca. He decided to take to me to the nearby “plaza” but that ended up being the mall. We went back to the original “authentic” location. I wanted authentic, and I got it.
Amidst the dusty electronic shops and tire stores, I did see a large steeple of a cathedral. I walked around the inside of this Catholic church for a few minutes, observed the statues—one particularly unique one with an archangel defeating a demon and its feet—and bought a trinket in their store. This, apparently, will be the cultural highlight of my experience in Mexico.
An archangel defeating a demon below its feet
This was confirmed a few minutes earlier by a Chinese lady I chatted with briefly. She ran a huge restaurant where I decided to eat a late lunch. Internet research showed that Mexicali boasts the country’s largest Chinese population with a Chinatown that rivals San Francisco’s. I had my cab driver take me to “a good Chinese restaurant.” I couldn’t understand the menu, so I trusted this lady who recommended several items: wonton soup, egg rolls, and teriyaki chicken. She ordered me the large portion on every item, capable of feeding four people That $8.99 meal in America cost me $40. Upon leaving, I asked this lady where I could see some historic buildings and stuff and she said, “They don’t have anything like that around here.”
I haven’t had a chance to experience an authentic Mexican restaurant yet . . . or maybe I have. It’s Saturday morning, and I have until this evening to travel back to the border town of Los Algodones and cross the border itself before it closes at sunset. Hopefully, they won’t care about the large bags of drugs I’ll be carrying.
Completely unrelated: the demon at the feet of that archangel is a dead ringer for Donald Trump. Just sayin.
When I awoke this morning, the hotel's wifi didn't work. There's no place to walk to for breakfast, and besides, the Mexicans don't really drink much coffee and I don't think they do breakfast either. I had sort of given up on Mexicali when the cab driver asked me where he should take me.
"McDonalds," I said.