Taking the Bus to Laredo (2009)

    Visas, especially tourist visas, have all sort of rules and regulations, a situation that has only gotten grossly more complicated in the aftermath of September 11, when the western world exchanged Cold War paranoia for a fear of terrorism.  Fortunately, Mexico is still one of the more welcoming nations of the world, and grants tourists 180 days without question.  Crossing the border into Mexico is generally uneventful and to renew a tourist visa, one only needs to leave Mexico and return.

            In San Miguel de Allende, one of the more popular and least expensive methods of obtaining a new visa is to take the overnight bus to Laredo, Texas.  It is a relatively painless trip, costing between fifty and seventy-five U.S. dollars for the round trip journey, and provides the bonus of a day of shopping in the United States, where one can gather up all those little necessities that are not always easy to find in Mexico.

            For those who have not taken a bus in Mexico, let me explain that the country has an excellent bus system, comprised of numerous companies that provide transportation throughout the country and into various parts of the United States.  Despite all the tales of bandits and drug violence along the border towns, buses are a very safe and modestly priced method to travel.  In Mexico buses offer three levels of service – luxury, first class and second class.  Second class buses are jokingly referred to as “chicken buses.”

            As a rule, first class and luxury buses are often nicer than buses in the U.S.  They are modern, very clean, have comfortable seats, rest rooms, in-route movies and in some cases even provide food and beverage.  Because of the distances traveled, they often travel at night.  Night travel is more comfortable, because of higher temperatures and extremely bright sun, although all the inter-city buses I saw were equipped with black-out curtains.  The problem with night travel is, if you are someone who likes looking out the window, there is often little to be seen.

            My journey from San Miguel to Laredo covered more than five hundred miles and took approximately twelve hours.  While I have taken long train trips, both in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, this was my first overnight bus ride since my days in the Marine Corps back in the early seventies.  I boarded the bus at the central bus station in San Miguel, which has a steady stream of buses heading in all directions.  I carried my portable word processor, a toothbrush and toothpaste and a bag of snacks.  Why is it we can eat healthy most of the time, but think it is perfectly fine to gobble junk food when we travel?   Stress, I guess.

            My journey started smoothly.  The bus left San Miguel around six in the evening and arrived in Laredo just before six the following morning.  Crossing the border was uneventful, especially for someone with a U.S passport.  In fact, the border guards were much more concerned with checking the bus than they were with checking the people onboard the bus.

            Laredo is a city I had never seen before, but which I had checked out carefully on the internet so I would know where to find the best shopping and how to get there.  Upon arrival, however, my first object was a real American breakfast – eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast, so I made a beeline to the first open restaurant.  Opening the menu, what was the first item offered?  Huevos rancheros!  I quickly learned that in many ways Laredo is an awful lot like Mexico.  Fortunately, my Gringo breakfast was also on the menu, a meal I savored, fighting the urge to order a stack of pancakes on the side.

            I then took a city bus to the local power shopping center, buying a new digital camera at a half price sale, a few needed items of clothing, and several giant containers of over-the-counter medical supplies.  I lunched on a tall beer and hamburger, and then headed back downtown, where I explored the center city until it was time for my bus rid back to San Miguel.  Everything was going smoothly and I was looking forward to a restful trip south, but that was not to be.

            I returned to the international bus terminal well in advance of the scheduled departure time, and shortly after five that evening we were on our way back to San Miguel.  At the international bridge, as we prepared to cross the Rio Grande River, a Mexican Border Patrol agent boarded the bus and introduced himself, explaining in both Spanish and English that he was checking to make sure we were not carrying any weapons into Mexico.  On the U.S. side, we are afraid of undocumented workers.  On the Mexican side, they are afraid of firearms.  Seems to be an interesting difference in the perspectives of our two countries.

            It was at this first border check point that I discovered  I was the only passenger who did not speak fluent Spanish.  I had learned to say, “No hablo espanol muy bien” (I do not speak Spanish very well.), a statement which even then exaggerated my knowledge of the Spanish language.

            Once across the river, our bus pulled into a holding area, where we were greeted by a border crossing agent with customs declaration forms in Spanish,  Again, I was the odd man out.  Here we took our luggage off the bus, an act that proved to be highly fortunate as my journey progressed.  I had two small bags. 

            Inside the border station, they x-rayed my bags and I got another opportunity to “push the button.”  When entering Mexico, everyone pushes the button.  If the light, and in this case it was the size and shape of a traffic signal, is green, you pass.  If it is red, they search your luggage.  I got a bright green light.  Now, all I needed was a new tourist visa and I could climb back on the bus.  Unfortunately, to obtain my visa, I had to walk to the immigration facility, about a city block away.  There, I completed my English language declaration form, had my passport checked and then walked to another location to pay for my visa.  If you travel by air, the cost of the visa is automatically included in the price of your ticket, but on land you must pay for it separately.  Here, I found myself in line with several families traveling by car.

            Throughout this process, I periodically walked to the window to make sure that my bus was still there.  It was, that is until the last time I checked, when I discovered that it had left without me.  I was once again a legal visitor in Mexico, welcomed for another six months, but without a ride back to San Miguel.  I immediately thought of a college friend, who came from a large family.  During a motor home vacation they left one of the children at a gas station, something they did not discover until they had driven many miles down the road.  Fortunately, families will go back for their own.  Sadly, I had no similar expectation about my bus.  I was one lonely, abandoned Gringo.

            In my best survival Spanish, which was proving woefully inadequate, I tried to explain my problem to the border guards.  We did a lot of smiling and nodding of heads, but I still had the feeling I was on my own.  It was one of those points in time when one does not immediately know the best thing to do, when they must stop and think about the options, secretly hoping that someone will come to their rescue.

            Sitting alone on a low wall in the early evening, a duffle bag and a backpack beside me, I contemplated my options.  I could return to the United States, a short walk across the International Bridge that spans the river flowing between Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.  There I could return to the bus station where I knew there would be a representative of the bus company to assist me.  At least there I knew I would find someone who spoke my language.   I could wait at the border station for the next Autobuse Americanos, the bus company I was traveling with, and explain my problem to the driver, if he spoke English.

            At that point a Mexican solder with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder approached and asked me what I was doing.  Things were not looking good and I began feeling a bit uneasy.  I was alone in foreign country, and Mexican border towns are not the safest places in the world.  In fact, in recent years Nuevo Laredo has been a very violent place thanks to the drug cartels that supply illegal drugs to the United States. That was one of the reasons the Mexican Army provides security at the border crossings.

            Then, just about the time I was ready to walk back to the U.S., a bilingual driver from another bus company came to my rescue. He had heard about my problem from one of the border agents, and offered to give me a lift to a service center used by the bus company I was using.  It was an offer I could not refuse.  When he dropped me at the service center – a combination gas station, garage, convenience store, gourmet coffee shop and fast food restaurant, he explained my problem to the manager, who in turn promised to explained it to the driver of the next southbound bus from Autobuse Americanos. 

            Here I was able to call Cindy in San Miguel.  I felt it was important to reassure her that while I would be arriving late, I had not been caught in a gun battle between local drug cartels or captured by bandits.  She said I should have just surprised her.  When she hung up, she called our two sons – one in Chicago and one in Florida – and told them of my predicament.  They independently responded, “He’s an ex-Marine and has a Ph.D.  We think he’ll make it.”  At that particular point in time, I was not so confident, although I kept telling myself that I would eventually make it back to San Miguel, exactly when and how were yet to be determined.  I also reminded myself that I was on “Mexican Time,” which means don’t get in a hurry, be patient, the problem will ultimately be resolved.  All in all, it is not a bad philosophy for life.

            Ironically, the Autobuse Americanos driver who appeared at the service center about an hour later was one I had met the night before on my trip going north to Laredo.  He remembered me and took me to Monterray, approximately three hours south.  There he explained my problem to the company’s station manager.  In a matter of minutes, I was given a new ticket on a third bus line that would take me to San Luis Potosi, and enough money to buy a ticket from there to San Miguel. 

            In just a few hours, I had been helped by four good Samaritans, two who did not even speak English, but all who were gladly willing to help.  As I continued on my way to San Miguel, I could not help but think about the negative attitude that so many individuals in the United States have toward Mexicans.  It is truly very sad that so many Gringos have an unfair and distorted picture of their neighbors south of the border.

            My journey to San Luis Potosi was on a luxury bus.  I took a comfortable seat toward the back, extended the leg rest, but had trouble sleeping, distracted by the movie and afraid I might miss my final connection.   Here again, I wish the journey had been during the daylight, because it was clear, even in the darkness, that we climbed several thousand feet up into the Sierra Madras.  I have seen the area from an airplane and know the view from the ground must be absolutely breathtaking.

            I am always fascinated by the passing scenery and would much rather travel by train or bus, than fly or even drive.  When driving, one is forced to concentrate on the driving, not on the scenery.  My favorite journeys have been on British trains, especially in Scotland, on which I have taken many different journeys.

            In San Luis Potosi, I took the wrong bus to San Miguel, although looking back it may have been the right bus for a Gringo who was converting to Mexican Time.  It was a second class bus, commonly referred to as the “Chicken Bus,” and it took about five hours to travel the final 150 miles to San Miguel, a lot longer than I had expected.  The bus was clean, although well worn, and despite all of the jokes, not one of my fellow passengers had feathers.

            The bus left San Luis Potosi at six in the morning.  We were the first bus of the day on the road to San Miguel and there were only four of us onboard, including the driver, as we pulled out of the station into the early morning darkness.  For the first time since Laredo, I felt completely relaxed. 

            By the time we had reached the outskirts of the city, the sun was making its first appearance of the day, and before long it shone brighter and with more intensity than any other place I have lived or traveled, even Florida.

            During all my journeys through the campo (countryside), I found myself enthralled by the beauty of this land, especially if one looks beyond the wounds inflicted upon it by mankind.  This is an ancient world that dates back tens of thousands of years, to the time before modern man, to a time when humans respected their environment, taking only the essentials needed to survive, a practice that civilized man seems to have abandoned.

            I found myself comparing the two worlds – past and present – my mind drifting along in a stream of consciousness, reviewing our evolution from primitive to modern human. Looking back, I do not believe their world was better?  It was a savage world, where survival went to the fittest, violent death to the weak – the frail and the ones without clubs.  But this was also the time of the early thinkers, the ones who created the first stories, used their imagination to answer the nagging question that has always confronted humanity.   Why do we exist?  Their world was filled with mystery, they gave us our earliest religions, creating tales to help protect themselves from those with clubs and claws.

            Even today our world seems very primitive, little more than men with clubs, although we have more rules to help protect the weak and the innocent.  While we like to think of ourselves as civilized, the truth is that we are still savages in so many ways.  These were some of my thoughts as the bus meandered along and mind rambled – alert, but showing the stress of two nights with not enough sleep.

            I kept looking out across miles of dried yellow grass, contrasting against the green scrub trees and cactus, and on beyond to the rugged, treeless mountains that were a multitude of greens and browns, and finally up into the sky of pale blue, with its empty waterless puffs of white.  The world around me was begging for the approaching season of rain, for a renewal that would grant it another year of life.

            Before long we began picking up passengers from along the side of the road.  Some waited at bus shelters, other simply stood where a dusty dirt and gravel path met the pavement.  These early passengers were workers, a few who were finishing a night of work and headed home, but most were on their way to a long day of work.  In the U.S., many Americans have a negative attitude toward Mexicans workers, but most of the ones I encountered seem to be honest, hard working souls.  Theirs is a difficult life, but they seem committed to making the best of what they have.

            As the bus moved on through the early morning, we also began picking up school children, many dressed in the uniform of their school, others dressed more individually.  All with ornaments that were easily recognizable as part of a universal teenage culture.  While few Mexican children can afford the expensive clothes worn by more affluent teenagers in the U.S., there are plenty of knock-offs available in the local markets.  Even in the most rural parts of Mexico, one finds the imprint of U.S. culture, especially in the clothing worn by teenage girls, in the cartoon characters on backpacks and t-shirts of the younger children, and in the junk food snacks they consume.

            Here, my fellow travelers were old and young, traveling alone and in small groups, shy toward a Gringo such as myself, but highly verbal amount their own companions.  Anyone who wants a realistic picture of rural Mexican life will find a second class bus trip a fascinating experience.  For a working class historian such as myself, it was truly remarkable, this wobbly journey through the campo, a path with so many twists and turns dictated by the surrounding mountains.  Except for Delores Hildalgo, the birthplace of Mexican independence from Spain, this was a road rarely traveled by Gringos, although it was probably more like the world people like Neal Cassady found back in the 1960s. This was “real” Mexico, the world of working class Mexicans.  Here there was a simplicity of life, a respect for the past and a mostly untainted world.  I remember one young school girl in particular who sat beside me for several miles.  As we passed each little church, she would make the sign of the cross and kiss her curled index finger.

            Looking back, I could have taken a faster bus, but I am glad I did not.  My journey was one of many learning experiences, one that I would have missed if it had not been for a Mexican bus driver who accidently left me at the border station.  As a result, I was able to see parts of the country I most certainly would never have seen.  I was able to experience a tiny bit of what life is like for a working class Mexican, and I was helped along my journey by people who provided their assistance for no other reason than it was the kind thing to do.  

© David Lee McMullen, 2021