Day 5 Nogales, Mexico

Today we decided to drive to Mexico. It took about an hour to get there. Once there, we parked the car on the US side of the border and walked across. It's kind of strange, we walked into Mexico without even breaking stride. Upon returning to the US, there's at least a half hour line. We walked the town for about an hour and really didn't do or buy anything. It's nothing but street hawkers, junk stores, and pharmacies. It's definitely the place to buy your drugs. There were only two or three restaurants and a few more bars...which were closed until later in the afternoon. Nothing looked very exciting. I've been to several Mexican border towns and this is the worst. At least we got a little walking in.

We left Nogales around noon and on the way back we stopped and took a tour through an old Spanish mission called Tumacacori ( I have no idea how it's pronounced). On the way in, we noticed a little bar across the street from the mission. About half way through the tour, we snuck off and went over to the Old Tumacacori Bar. We chatted with the owner (Dolores) and she told us the history of the old place. Her grandfather opened it in the 30's and after he died, her father ran it, and now it's her turn. She had some interesting stories of the old place. An hour later we started home again but decided to stop at Tubac for another walk around. We visited several shops that we hadn't seen before, but again we didn't buy anything. It really is a very nice collection of shops. On the way home we checked out the Longhorn Steakhouse at the recommendation of Dolores. It was supposed to have a good steak. It might well have, but we didn't want to eat there. Since we hadn't eaten all day, we thought we might have an early dinner, so we stopped at our neighborhood place called Trivetti's. We had met Linda the bartender several days before and enjoyed talking with her. We hung out there for awhile and both of us had veal and went back to the casita for the evening.