A Borderline Experience with Nogales
 Alan Solomon - Chicago Tribune
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| | Crossing the border from Arizona into Nogales, Sonora, requires only the will to do it. Getting back is tougher. (Tribune/Alan Solomon) | | |
Nogales, Mexico — The good thing about our border towns is they're close. Cross a bridge or a checkpoint and, hey, you're in another country.
It's especially good when everything changes - the food, language, music.
Cross from Detroit into Ontario, and you get Windsor, which is kind of different but not all that much. A touch of an accent, different brands of beer. Cross into Quebec and you get some French, but near the checkpoints it's still kind of familiar.
But cross from almost any U.S. border town into a Mexican border town, and you could be crossing from Tim McGraw and McDonald's to mariachis and machaca. Which is fun, or should be.
On the other hand . . . there's Nogales.
"This is what they see when they arrive," bemoans Lety Godinez, who works at an upscale gift shop near the crossing that's adjacent to the city's finest restaurant - and surrounded by whorehouses. " 'Oh, this is Mexico! It's nasty, dirty . . .' "
"It's a bad impression, the first time in Mexico."
Just three hours' drive from the springtime home of the Cubs in Mesa, and maybe an hour from the White Sox camp in Tucson, is . . . this.
"To be honest," says Christian Munoz, who sells curios here but spent some time living in Los Angeles, "people come to Nogales for one day, they have nothing to do, nothing to stay for."
"Here in Nogales, there's nothing. Honestly."
We'll tell you about it anyway, because if you're vacationing in the area or in Arizona to catch a ballgame, you might decide to come down and see what it's like (not a bad idea if your expectations are modest) and bring the kids (not a great idea, whatever your expectations), and because, well, it's a learning experience.
Mexico, much of it, is wonderful. Nogales isn't. It isn't Puerto Vallarta. Or Guanajuato or Oaxaca, or Morelia or Merida, or San Jose del Cabo or Guadalajara or Zihuatanejo.
What's it like?
Well, if you've been to Tijuana, it's kind of like that, though smaller (the official guess is 250,000 vs. 1.5 million in Tijuana, both estimates probably wildly inaccurate) and without the sense of celebrity: Bing Crosby and his pals didn't play the horses or gamble here during the 1930s and '40s the way they did in Tijuana. There is none of Tijuana's faded glamor because there was never glamor here to fade. Herb Alpert didn't front the Nogales Brass.
A plus, for Nogales: Though there is smarm, the smarmiest areas here aren't as smarmy as the smarmiest parts of Tijuana, whose smarm is about as smarmy as anything I've ever seen, which includes famously smarmy sections of Bangkok.
But like Tijuana, there are unusual equines here for your photographic entertainment. In Tijuana, the donkeys are painted with stripes. In Nogales, at least one is painted, instead, with black spots.
"Pancho, that's the name of my burro, my donkey," says the street-corner entrepreneur. "It's a Mexican Dalmatian burro."
Both cities will sell you pharmaceuticals from white-clad providers in medicinally clean stores. Quality controls, prescription requirements, import limits and comparative prices were not personally researched - I'm a travel writer, not a pharmacologist and certainly not a narc - so you're on your own.
And both cities have a primary shopping street - it's Avenida Obregon in Nogales - where you can buy the usual mercado curios and Louis Vuitton knockoffs and, if you shop carefully, examples of the best work of Mexican artisans from Pueblo, Guadalajara, Michoacan and Oaxaca.
As in most of Mexico, prices for these goodies, and for whatever else is being peddled with the assistance of street touts, are negotiable.
Then there are the restaurants.
Ask 20 people in Tijuana for the best restaurant in town, and you'll get half a dozen recommendations. Ask 20 in Nogales for a recommendation, and you'll get one: La Roca. Press them, and they may name a backup choice, but they'll have to think hard and it will come without enthusiasm.
It doesn't take long to figure out Nogales isn't an international tourist's dream.
There is a tourist-information booth just past the border point. On this day, a pleasant woman with an uncertain command of the English language commanded the mini-shop and a little girl who might have been her granddaughter.
Me: "Is there anything I should be sure to see while I'm here?"
Information person, after a few seconds' thought: "No, not really."
Me (after a thoughtful pause): "Perhaps a museum?"
Information person (no pause required): "No. No museum." Her face lit slightly: "There is a church. Very old church. Very old, very beautiful."
She walked me back onto the street and pointed the way, then commanded the little girl to bring me a small, crude map of downtown Nogales.
The church - Church of the Immaculate Conception - was built in 1891, making it nine years younger than the town, which began as a railroad border stop. It is pretty in the way of simple churches, but in a country of colonial missions and marvelous mining-town churches glittering with locally dug silver and gold, this church, speaking comparatively, was neither very old nor very beautiful.
But there are pockets of the Mexico we love.
A small zocalo (a "square," though this one is more of a "wedge") alongside the church has a little bandstand and space for carts and stands selling edible stuff. A favorite treat, judging from the line: small bags of tortilla chips covered first with melted cheese, then white cheese crumbles. Thirteen pesos (about $1.25).
There isn't much room for little kids to chase pigeons, a zocalo tradition, but they do.
There are two additional compact, shaded plazas in this compact downtown area. One is alongside Pestalozzi School (1912, curiously Victorian, maybe worth a picture), where merchants peddle religious and other trinkets; the other is a sliver with trees filled (at certain times) with screeching birds, a mini-park that would be lovely if it weren't alongside lanes choked with outbound traffic, the cars idling stinkily while waiting to be cleared to the States.
On the commercial streets, you may walk by a shop or a little restaurant and hear Mexican music, but that's just a quick sampling. More often, the only sounds are of weary shopkeepers inviting you into their shops without much conviction.
"Hello, amigo. Welcome."
How you doing . . .
"Take a look, mister."
That's OK . . .
"Rolex watches? Cuban cigars?"
I don't think so . . .
"How about a blanket . . . "
Not today . . .
"You want a nice girl? Massage? Relieve the tension . . . "
And so it goes.
The bars are open in the afternoon, but there isn't much business, even on a Saturday. After a fine dinner at La Roca that lasts past sunset, I walk the same streets in the dark looking for a likely place to grab a beer and observe, and find a small, dim bar, nearly empty, where four men nurse bottles of beer, lime bits on the table drained of juice, and stare blankly and silently at a TV fight.
It's after 9, I give up and head back across the border.
"You left too early," Christian Munoz would tell me the next day. "If you come 10, 11, the party starts. There are six different bars right around here."
Munoz, originally from Mexico City, is happy enough being back in Mexico, in Nogales.
"If you go to L.A. downtown after 5, it's dead," he says. "Why? People are afraid. You come down here 8, 9, 10, it's safer than in the United States, at least in L.A."
But business isn't good. The same North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that brought assembly plants and jobs to border towns like Nogales brought Mexican goods right across the border to Nogales, Ariz., and to Tucson, where prices are competitive, merchants say.
"That really broke us," says one of them, Jose Vazquez.
With the new rules that kicked in Jan. 31 - it takes more than a driver's license and a little banter now to get back into Arizona - the tourism business won't get better real soon.
And there's that other reality.
Lety Godinez works at a shop called El Changarro. There, alongside La Roca restaurant, shoppers will find dishes, glassware and gift items as fine as can be found in the finest shops in Mexico City and Guadalajara. Well-off locals drive their cars into a walled parking area, are served filete Bamoa en chipotle by tuxedoed waiters at La Roca, cross a courtyard to the entrance of El Changarro to browse and buy, then drive back to Nogales' nicer neighborhoods.
Tourists who cross the border on foot never see those neighborhoods, nor the assembly plants. If they choose El Changarro and La Roca, they will walk from the border past businesses with signs that offer drinks and dancers and massages and promises of happy endings before they see the sign for La Roca.
"When they come with their families, with their wives, they don't feel comfortable to walk through these streets," says Godinez. "I can understand it. Sadly, all these bars, prostitution bars right across the street - it's business, but it's a bad impression for those who come the first time."
Why, then, visit at all?
"You have the opportunity," she says, "to compare the difference between two countries. We're very close . . ."
It could be a good thing. It could be a showcase for Mexico.
It isn't. It isn't very close.
asolomon(at)tribune.com
GETTING THERE
Nogales, Sonora, is immediately across the border from Nogales, Ariz., about 180 miles from Phoenix and about 70 from Tucson, all on Interstate Highways 10 and 19. With work zones and the usual stoppages, figure about three hours from Phoenix, longer if you explore some of the scenic and historic attractions along the way (Casa Grande ruin, missions, Saguaro National Park and more); and a little more than an hour from Tucson.
Crossing the border into Mexico is easy: You park your car at one of several lots on the U.S. side and just walk in (see Getting Around, below). There's rarely a backup. When crossing back into the U.S. - which can take 30 minutes in line, or more if you really time it wrong - most people will need either a passport or two pieces of identification - a driver's license (or other government-issued ID) and a "citizenship document" (birth certificate, etc.). There may be changes ahead; for the latest, check the U.S. Customs Web page, www.cbp.gov.
Driving your own car across the border makes zero sense unless you plan to explore Mexico beyond Nogales. If that's the plan, information on regulations, fees, insurance and other stuff you should know can be found through Sanborn's Mexico Insurance at 800-222-0158 or, better, on its Web site, www.sanbornsinsurance .com/nogales.
You won't be able to drive a U.S. rental car across the border (though you can rent a car on the Mexico side).
GETTING AROUND
You can cover tourist-essential Nogales entirely on foot, and in a couple of hours. Most day-visitors park on the Arizona side in lots near the border-crossing; most lots charge $4, though many folks ignore the "you'll be towed" warning signs and park in the large McDonald's parking lot for free. The walk from the lots is just a couple of blocks. Taxis exist on the other side of the border, as do local buses.
But one more time: It makes absolutely no sense - none, zero, nada - to drive your car across the border if you're just going to walk around downtown for the day.
STAYING THERE
There are hotels in downtown Nogales on the Mexican side, but most either rent by the massage or don't meet the usual U.S. standard for a clean, comfortable overnight. One that's acceptable, with better rooms than the dim lobby would suggest: Hotel Fray Marcos de Niza (doubles from about $59, rates subject to change; 011-52-631-312-1651). There's a convenient motel cluster on the Arizona side off I-19 about 21/2 miles north of the border that includes a Holiday Inn Express, Super 8 and Motel 6. I paid $94 (including breakfast) for an excellent room at the Holiday Inn Express (888-890-0242; www .ichotelsgroup.com).
DINING THERE
Absolutely everyone's choice as Nogales' best restaurant is La Roca (91 Calle Elias; 011-52-631-312-0760), set in one of the city's more, um, colorful districts a short walk from the border crossing. Don't let its surface-elegance (maitre d' in black tux, waiters in white ones) deter you; prices are rational, there's no dress code (though you'll feel like a jerk in shorts and a T-shirt), and the entrees - though proudly Sonora-Mexican - include lots of familiar favorites. La Hacienda del Caballo Rojo (House of the Red Horse), 142 Avenida Obregon near some of the city's better shopping, gets and deserves good marks for both quality and cleanliness.
There are plenty of street food-stands and carts selling tacos, tamales, ham and cheese sandwiches, churros, elotes (corn, on and off the cob), etc. - and smaller restaurants frequented mainly by locals. Take the usual precautions.
INFORMATION
Sonora Office of Tourism, 800-4-SONORA; www.gotosonora.com/nogales-son-mx.htm |
Vallarta Weddings
Travel & Outdoors | March 2008 
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