1 hot coffee, 1 cold coffee, one for each hand

This is a post about my trip to El Paso, Texas.

El Paso, Texas – the last city in North America.  If you dare  run the 301’st metre from downtown El Paso, and try to step back, you’ll be shot dead by the US border police ;). For those who don’t know, El Paso Del Norte is the one of the few legal road entrances to North America, and is a beautiful city!

All through the trip, I ate and slept, in between spells of eating and sleeping, with heavy caffeine in between to assist in digestion ;). One fine night, Ashwin and Iwent to an Arabian restaurant. We ordered some rice, tomatoes, onions and capsicum. For the price charged, the owner could have claimed he got the items shipped from Arabia to his restaurant, and it would be believable. We were in no mood to talk terms to a guy who would have us grilled and served for the next meal. We ended up bartering our purses to pay for the food. Realising that we still had our clothes to barter, we decided we might as well as have a good time. We next headed to Cafe Coffee Day Starbucks coffee, and had 2 coffees – 1 cold, 1 hot, one for each hand! That explains the title! 🙂 All in all, a good 45$ burnt in 2 hours 🙂

As with any of my trips, I got caught next to a character this time as well! This time, it was a shady Mexican guy. El Paso, being the Mexican border, naturally attracts a lot of Mexicans to the greyhound service. This time, I was the only non-mexican in the bus. Families of Mexicans thronged the bus, waiting to explore the Country of plenty….

This guy was old and probably retired. He was from Juarez, Mexico. As with all Mexicans, they have this gangster way of talking, and trust me, it’s scary!

He had stuff to offer to me – First, mexican candy wrapped in newspaper and wound with rubber band – that looked way too similar to marijuana. It looked all the more believable given the drug cartels in Mexico, and that Juarez is one of the main centres. He stared at me ordered me to take it. After watching all those tamil movies, I was all the more convinced that it had some drug in it, and I would wake up, tied and gagged in some abandoned warehouse! His scary stare did the job, and I did have some of it. It tasted like coconut burfee. I was relieved when he had some of it himself.

Next, he had a “mixed animal” burrito (chapathi roll-like stuff). The look of it scared the hell out of me! I am sure a a leg or hand of everything that runs/walks/crawls was inside the chapathi! He tried to coax me into eating it, assuring me that it would taste as good as mixed vegetable! He proudly showed me his food bag. It had everything form of food known to mankind, with soya sauce, ketchup, mustard and mayo! This guy was a walking fast-food shop!

Finally, he offered me something I could have. A can of juice from Mexico. It had something written in Spanish, and a picture of an orange on it. The picture was reason enough for me to pour it down my throat. What I didn’t know is that it was alcoholic! I ended up feeling terribly dizzy, reinforcing my theory that the candy was drugged, and I eventually dozed off.

I woke up after 2 hours, and quickly closed my eyes, so that if there was anyone watching me in the warehouse, I could play asleep, and wait for the right time to escape. It seemed this guy was just waiting for me to get up, and offered 100g of roast cashews.

This guy knew both drivers by their names, and it seemed they knew him well too! Seemed he traveled regularly by Grenhound. By now, I was convinced that this Mexican should be the very reason for the obesity of the fatso in the last trip :P. If anyone had traveled 5 times with this guy, they would be as fat!

Finally, I saw the magic sign – “Tucson”, and as with the last trip, I got down on the outskirts and walked down 2km to get to a local bus 🙂

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year folks! Thanks for reading!