My Christmas letter will be different this year, for I will
tell you about my recent trips to Amarillo, Texas
& old Mexico. Last summer I decided I would like to see Mexico
as I had heard so much about it from people who had been there. So one day in early Sept. I went over to the travel agency &
made reservations on a 20 day Greyhound escorted tour,
leaving Los Angeles Nov. 9th.
Contents
A
Visit to the Tylers in Amarillo. 1
Arranging
for the Trip of a Lifetime. 2
Phoenix
& El Paso. 2
Chihuahua
City. 2
Durango. 3
Leon. 3
Mexico
City. 4
Acapulco. 4
Taxco. 4
Morelia. 5
Guadalajara. 5
Mazatlan. 5
Culican. 6
Hermosillo. 6
Back
to Phoenix. 6
46th
Wedding Anniversary Trip. 7
In Oct. I got vaccinated (U.S.
requirement), then went to Amarillo
via Greyhound to spend a couple of weeks with Patty, Owen & boys. Enjoyed
getting acquainted again with my 2 livewire great grandsons,
as it was 7 months since I had seen them. Eddie was 3
on Jan. 3rd, & quite an active child. He has a cheery smile,
bright eyes & talks & acts like a much older child. His red hair is now
the color of gold, & his eyes have changed from blue to hazel. I was
sitting opposite him at the table & he sat there looking at me, &
suddenly he said, “Grandma Harris, you talk funny.” At first
I didn’t understand what he meant. Then it dawned on me. I didn’t
talk like a Texan. Owen says I talk like a Yankee. Even Patty is getting the Texas
drawl. Little Ronnie, 18½ mo. Old. In Oct. has a time trying to keep up with
his brother, but he learns fast. There isn’t anything
he can’t climb, & he even can hang from the stunt bars. He hadn’t started to
talk much & would only say a word or two, but he would look at you &
tell you a whole string of words, understandable by none but himself. He has
dark blue eyes & blond wavy hair.
Sunday afternoon we went to Palo
Duro Canyon,
a big surprise in that flat country. It’s a beautiful
deep, colorful canyon with red & white walls & a stream winding back
& forth across the road on the floor of the canyon. There were many
colorful formations & the canyon itself has quite a history.
After I got home I went over &
picked up my ticket & Mexican tourist card & packed my bags for my trip
to the new & strange country below the border. I wanted my husband &
Ruth to go, but he felt he couldn’t be away that long,
& she had been having trouble with her back & thought so much riding on
a bus would make it worse, so I got my neighbor to go, as we would each save
$40 by sharing the hotel rooms.
Phoenix & El Paso
On Sun. Nov. 9th we
boarded the Special Greyhound bus in downtown Los Angeles
& headed for Phoenix, Ariz.
(altitude 1092 ft.) where we spent the night at the Adams Hotel. The next day
we picked up several more tourists, making 25 in all. Some were from Canada,
Minn., Mo.,
Riverside, Calif.,
Encinitas, Lake Isabella,
Altadena, Pasadena,
La Puente, Glendale,
Long Beach
& Los Angeles. We each were given a badge to wear with our name & reading “Saludos Amigos! Soy Miembro de la
jira A Mexico organizada 7 conducia por Greyhound.”
(Greetings Friends! I am member of the tour to Mexico
organized & conducted by Greyhound.)
We left Phoenix with our Mexican guide Daniel Gomez (who
remained with us until we returned back to Los Angeles) & arrived in El
Paso, Texas (alt 3762 ft.) at 5 p.m. The country was
most scenic, the real west, land of the Apache Indians, the cowboy, the dude
ranch & great ranches where cattle & sheep in countless thousands roam
the sagebrush covered plains & plateaus,
supplying meat for America.
Where rain falls or irrigation is provided the earth
yields rich harvests of grain, cotton, fruits & vegetables. The cotton was
ready to be picked & quite a thrilling sight. The
mines in the mountains. Also pour out treasure — gold,
silver, copper, lead, uranium & other metals. To reach El
Paso, we traveled across Calif.,
Ariz., half across New
Mexico & into the corner of Texas.
After spending the night at the Hilton Hotel & changing
$20 into $247 pesos (Mexican dollars) & boarding a Mexican Greyhound bus,
we crossed the Rio Grande to Juarez (Wha’ – rez) Mexico (alt. 3700 ft.) where we had our tourist cards
validated. By this time we were pretty well acquainted
with each other.
Chihuahua City
We then headed south on the Pan American highway(central
route) to the city of Chihuahua (Chee – wah’ – wah)
(alt. 4593 ft). The scenery in the Mexican state of Chihuahua
is very similar to that in the U. S. Southwest around El
Paso. Broad plains & deserts surrounded by the Sierra
Nevada Mountains.
In some areas there were sand dunes & slso lakes
formed by the cloudbursts in Oct. We saw havoc wrought by the heavy rains all
the way to Mexico City. Now for a
bit of humor. I saw a bug on the window of the bus & asked the guide what
it was. He laughed & said, “Oh! That’s a cucaracha.” (cockroach)
We killed several before we got to Chihuahua
where we had some in the hotel rooms. That’s all that
we saw in Mexico.
Thank goodness I didn’t bring any home.
We got there early enough to drive around the city &
visit the home of Pancho Villa’s widow. He was a famous Mexican bandit. We each
paid her 1 peso (8¢) for showing us the house,
Pancho’s guns, swords, portraits & relics. The house has 50
rooms that are livable. It was destroyed 3 times
during revolutions & rebuilt. We had a group picture taken with her
in the center, in one of the patios. I had her autograph a couple of post cards
for me.
Our hotel was rather quaint with tiled floors, tiled steps
up the hand-made wrought iron stairway, & beautiful huge wrought iron
chandelier handing from the ceiling of the lobby, & the massive iron doors which grace the palatial entrance. (All the hotels
& motels we stopped at in Mexico
had tiled floors, except the one in Mexico City
had carpet.) Across the corner was a modern mkt where
I bought several bananas for 1 peso (8¢). In the evening
a group of us toured the downtown with its poorly lighted narrow streets,
although the one our hotel was on was a nice wide one, but the sidewalks were
poor.
Durango
The next day we left for Durango
(Doo – ran’ – go) & passed thru many small town
& villages. The big bus went along the very narrow streets where shops
& homes crowd the roadway & we could look into doors, windows & patios. On the way we stopped in Parral (Pah – ral’) (alt. 5450 ft.) to
take pictures of the beautiful old cathedral & were shown the tree where
Pancho Villa stood when he was shot to death by soldiers. I saw children in the
plaza with hula hoops. I took a movie of them in
action. Along the highwaymany
bridges were washed out & our bus had to ford the streams. After leaving Parral, we were in the mountains all the way, with altitudes
over 8000 ft, hairpin curves & gorgeous scenery.
We spent the next night in Durango
(alt. 6314 ft.) which is the center of a mining region rich in gold, silver,
iron, sulphur & rubies. In fact, all the towns
& cities in the mountains seem to be centered around
mines. Even though we were in the mountains, there were miles of level land
where huge crops of cotton, wheat, & corn are raised. And all along the
way were beautiful wild flowers. We
stopped for lunch in Zacatecas (Sah
– ke – the’ – cahs) (alt
7377 ft.) at a typical Mexican restaurant in the center of town on a narrow
street where we were greeted with a mariachi band & served a 7 course meal
for 18 pesos ($1.44).
Leon
And on to Leon (Leh
– own’) (alt 6183 ft.) our next stop. We crossed the Tropic of Cancer & the
bus stopped for us to take pictures & sample the cactus apples growing on
the tuna cactus. We passed miles of these cactus with
their ripe rose-colored apples. I picked a dozen different kinds of wild
flowers including zinnias. One of the women thought the Tropic of Cancer was
where all the people have cancer. We passed thru a town where blue-eyed Indians
live. They look odd.
Leon
is the “Shoe Capital of Mexico.” When we
arrived at the Hotel Leon, we were given a postcard
with our names with welcome greetings on it, & attached was a tiny pair of
leather shoes. The card was a colored picture of the beautiful roof garden with
gorgeous colored tile benches & beautiful tile walls. A wrought-iron fence enclosed the owners
beautiful patio on the roof. Our room had massive old colonial furniture in it.
Leon is in a
wide fertile valley up in the mountains, famous for strawberries, hand-drawn
work, leather goods, tobacco & corn.
We passed thru many small villages, each with its cathedral
spires rising above the city. Each with its parks & plazas & narrow
streets. Saw the native milk peddlers with their cans of milk hanging on each
side of burros. The women wear black rebozos &
each seemed to have a baby wrapped snuggly in it. The children had hula hoops everywhere we went & some were real experts.
Mexico
City
The next day we arrived in Mexico City
(alt 7349 ft.). After leaving San Juan Del Rio, we traveled on the new super
highway into Mexico City. We were
greeted at our hotel in downtown, with refreshments, tequila, potato chips & salted nuts. We were also
given corsages of orchids & pansies. We spent a couple of days
sightseeing before leaving for Acapulco.
Visited the oldest & largest cathedral in America.
It has 14 beautiful chapels, lots of carved statues
covered with gold leaf. All the churches we visited in Mexico
were centuries old, but well kept & were most beautiful inside.
There are 160 fountains in the city, lots of statues &
many flat-iron buildings. Very wide blvds; the widest has 12 lanes, with 3
divisions of trees & grass. The side streets are very narrow and are
one-way streets. We visited all the
important places in & around the city, including the National Palace, the
museum, the new university with its beautiful bldgs, Chapultepec Castle of Maximilian & Carlotta on top of a
hill overlooking the city, a boat trip on the canals of Xochimilco
(Soch – che – meel’ – co). We saw them making Mexican glass & each of
us received a glass flower.
We went to San Juan Teotihuacan
(San Hwan The - o – tee – wah – cahn’)
29 miles northeast of Mexico City, where we followed the “Highway of the Dead”
connecting Pyramid of the Sun, larger than any in ancient Egypt, the Pyramid of
the Moon & temples of ancient gods, all built by races who lived there
before the Aztecs. The sculpturing of the stone slabs & the enormous
serpents’ heads on some of the outer walls & stairways are
skillfully executed. The road was lined with
pepper trees loaded with rose-colored pepper berries. I bought 2 hand-carved & colored baseball bats for Eddie &
Ronnie from a boy outside the pyramids.
Acapulco
The next morning we left early to have breakfast in Cuernavaca (kwehr
– nah –vah’ – cah) (alt
7412 ft.) at a gorgeous place with the most beautiful garden we had seen so far.
Then over the mountains to Acapulco
(Ah – ka – pool’ – ko) (alt sea level) with its blvds, up-to-date stores & luxury hotels, its deep-sea
fishing & semi-tropical climate. On the way we
went thru pine forests, banana & cocoanut plantations & all along the
way were gorgeous wild flowers, fields of rice & sugar cane, olive
orchards, bee hives, thatched huts, heavily laden burrows plodding along the
road, cattle & horses.
Acapulco is a
famous sea shore resort with 160 hotels. Ours was a
lovely modern one right next to the ocean where I could hear the waves &
watch the sunset from my balcony. It was hot & humid there night & day,
even in November.
Taxco
The next stop was Taxco
(Tahs’ co) (alt 5500 ft.) where we toured the city by
taxi as the streets were cobblestone (as were the streets in most of the towns)
& too narrow & steep for our bus. We visited the quaint shops &
bought jewelry. Our hotel, Posada de la Mision, was
up on the mountainside with a superb view of the city below. At the entrance
was the most gorgeous bougainvillea vine I have ever seen. Its clusters of red
flowers were wonderful. We had a lovely room done in maple furniture with the
door on the outside balcony. The climate is the best in the world in Taxco, I have read.
Morelia
Leaving Taxco,
we wound around over the mountains on many hairpin curves to the colonial city
of Morelia
(Moh – reh’ – lyah) (alt 6234 ft.) where we spent the night at Hotel Virrey de Mendosa, once a
colonial mansion. Superb oil paintings, massive furniture, huge carved
fireplace & tall leather-embossed entrance doors from the original Spanish
villa are still in use. The hotel faced
a large park.
I was awakened at 5 am with church bells ringing & rockets
exploding. This went on for 15 min. Then every 15 min till
we left, the church bells rang & ahe rockets
continued to explode. At 6:30
I heard a band & looked out my window & there it was coming along the
street with a man going ahead throwing rockets into the air. I found out that
they were colebrating St. Cecelia’s Day. The Mexicans
celebrate all the saints days & many others. They
love to celebrate with parades & processions. The cathedral was across the
park. I liked Morelia
best of all the cities I visited. It was high in the mtns,
the air was so pure & clean & the climate was
mild & agreeable & seemed like such a clean city. I wish I could have
stayed longer. I saw oranges growing in a patio.
Guadalajara
The next day we traveled over the mountains toward Guadalajara
(Gwah – dah – lah – hah’ – rah) thru green country side
dotted with towns, church towers, brightly painted houses & stores grouped
around the plaza. On each side, we saw fields of beans, corn, & peppers,
peons guiding wooden plows behind teams of oxen, horses or mules, flowering
trees making splashes of color here & there & always the high mountains
in the background. We passed by two large lakes with villages along the shores.
I almost forgot the snow covered volcanoes outside Mexico
City.
We spent the night at Guadalajara
(alt 5220 ft.) at a hotel downtown near a large park. The climate here is ideal
at all seasons of the year. Along the way we saw great
fields of the maguey plant (century plant) from which tequila is made. It is
the Mexican national drink with about the potency of beer. Lots
of Americans live here & in some of the villages along Lake
Chapala.
Mazatlan
Next day we went over more mountains where we saw waterfalls
tumbling down the sides, went thru Indian villages, past waving cocoanut palms,
banana groves, jungle, paypaya trees, & other tropical
trees including coffee, to our next stopover Mazatlan
(Mah – sah – tlah’) (alt 3 ft.) which is the loveliest & most
entrancing seaport on the west coast of Mexico. The climate is lush &
tropical & the beaches, where the water is warm enuf for swimming the year around, extends for miles. Our
hotel was on the beach where we had a wonderful view of the Pacific
Ocean. We had a tropical storm there which
lasted about an hour. After it stopped raining & some of the water drained
away, I walked several blocks to the big mkt a block
square, opposite the cathedral, where I bought a big bunch of bananas for 3
pesos (24¢). After leaving Mazatlan,
we went thru more jungle where we saw some flocks of wild parrots
which were green with red on their wings. Saw a lot of
trees along the way covered with clusters of beautiful rose-colored bloom. The
wood is very strong and used for building & posts.
Culican
Our next stop was Culican (Coo – lya – cahn’) (alt 216 ft.) where
we stayed at the Los Tres Rios Motel (meaning the 3 rivers which pass by & thru this city). It was the newest & most modern place we had stopped at.
Beautifully landscaped with trees, shrubs &
bougainvillea vines. We crossed the river coming into town on a long railroad
trestle as the road bridge was washed out during the
Oct. rain. Culican is the tomato center, & it
ships 8000 carloads to the U. S.
every winter. From here on the the country changed.
Miles & miles of irrigated & cultivated land, much of it being planted to tomatoes. Had to cross another river on a
RR trestle at Navajoa (Nah- vo – he’ – ah).
As we went up the west coast highway toward Hersomillo (Air – mo – see’ – yo)
(alt 777 ft.) our last stopover in Mexico,
we passed thru Guayman (Y’ – mas)
a popular fisherman’s paradise on the Gulf of
California. Lost of Californians go here to fish the year around.
Hermosillo
Hermosillo
is becoming modernized with wider streets & modern
bldgs. I even saw parking meters on some of the
streets. It’s a popular winter resort because of its
mild winter climate. It is a metropolis of a fruit growing
region which produces figs, pomegranates, & citrus, especially oranges.
Date palms & sitrus trees give a semitropical
aspect to the city.
After leaving Hermosillo,
the country is mostly desert, & we go into higher altitude to Nogales
(No – gah’ – less) (Alt 3867 ft.) on the border of
the U. S., with
a high ornamental iron fence marking the boundary. On the Mexican side are colorful adobes,
cantinas, restaurants, curio shops with iron-grilled balconies, narrow winding
streets — all the atmosphere & excitement of a typical Mexican town. The
American side, with its office bldgs, hotels and stores is more prosaic & sober.
Here, at the border – on Thanksgiving Day, we had our
luggage inspected, showed our vaccination certificates, surrendered our tourist
cards, & changed our pesos to American dollars. I had 12 pesos for which I
got 1 American dollar.
The journey between the border & Phoenix
took us thru a picturesque region, much of it desert. Cattle raising,
mining & farming are the chief industries. We passed through the beautiful
city of Tucson.
We arrived back to the Adams Hotel in Phoenix
on Thanksgiving night at 5 p.m. We cleaned up, changed our clothes
& went half a block to “The Flame,” a very excellent restaurant where we
were given our Farewell Dinner, compliments of Greyhound. It seemed odd to see
American people again & to hear them talk without a Spanish accent. The
next morning we left for Los Angeles,
arriving at 4 p.m. The end of a scenic & thrilling trip
never to be forgotten. I want to take another trop to
Old Mexico, as several others want to do, driving down, so I can take more time
to browse around the cities I liked most. November is the best time to go as
the summer rains are over & the weather is about perfect. If you want to go
to Mexico for
the first time, I recommend the Greyhound conducted tours. I have had to leave
out much of my experiences as it would take many more
pages to write it all. Next time I go, my husband goes too.
I must add still another trip. On Dec. 18th.,
our 46th wedding anniversary, we took a little trip down south,
going down the inland route & coming back up the coast. We wanted to find a
place without smog (fog & or smoke). So we took
the freeway to Pomona & turned
south to Elsinore where we stopped to rest in the park.
We were only 6 miles from where the big forest fire started Sunday. We could
see & smell the smoke all the way to Escondido,
where we spent the night. While there we called on a
former neighbor from S. San Gabriel who bought a nice
ranch & moved down this summer to get away from the smog. He said there is
none there. We couldn’t tell because of the smoke.
The next day we went thru the mountains to the small town of
Ramona. We liked it for it seemed like a friendly
place with no smog. Lots of retired people live there.
Think we will visit it again some day. After lunch we
would our way back to Escondido
& headed for the coast. We spent the Night in San Clemente
near the ocean where we could smell the smoke from the fire. They got it under
control that night. We just picked a bad time for our trip, although it was
nice when we left home a noon. We
went 279 miles & had a real nice trip outside of the weather
which is unpredictable at this time of year.
My trip to Mexico
& return covered 5452 miles. To Amarillo
& return 2307 miles. This is all the traveling for 1958 except a trip up
the coast to San Simeon. We both extend our greetings for A Merry Christmas
& Happy New Year.
Mary Harris