by Maggie Ybarra
Daily Lobo
We spent the night on a bus the military felt the need to board at a ghastly hour in the morning.
Their flashlights glinted brightly in our faces, forcing us awake.
Alongside my travelling partner Adriana, who I interned with at The Albuquerque Tribune over the summer, I knew we had no right to complain.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
By using our status as students, we were able to purchase half- price tickets on an overnight bus from Juarez to Obreg¢n, Mexico. And at $35 for the entire 16-hour trip, we should have expected the inconvenience.
Buses in Mexico have certain characteristics.
They are often randomly boarded by the Mexican military. The bathroom located in the back is usually unsanitary. Your best shot at using toilet paper and a toilet that flushes is when the bus makes a 10-minute stop at a bus station to let current passengers off and new passengers on.
Unfortunately, those 10 minutes are also the only time you're allotted to buy food and drinks.
And, yes, the bus won't hesitate to leave without you.
Luckily, Adriana had been smart enough to buy some burritos in advance.
We kept them fresh by placing them between the windowpane and the curtain.
Wrapped in foil, they were able to stay cold during the night and trap heat from the sun in the morning.
Not long after the Mexican military gave our bus permission to cross the border from Chihuahua into Sonora, the two-way road we had been traveling on began to climb up into the mountains - only to twist and turn dangerously like a rollercoaster.
Our driver, ambitious and possibly deranged, sped along as if it weren't hazardous to do so.
And even though there was only one lane going in each direction, our driver had no problem swerving into oncoming traffic if so much as an 18-wheeler got in his way.
Still, we managed to arrive in Obreg¢n safely.
Obreg¢n, the Sonoran city where Adriana's parents live, is oddly imbalanced between the decadently rich and the devastatingly poor.
Only at night does the financial divide cease to exist, and the grand pueblo houses with their painted tile floors blend in with the wooden shacks.
Makeshift taco stands line the corners of neighborhood streets. Their lights, warm and inviting, give the city a charming, eternal-Christmas feeling.
Families dine together until all hours of the night as children play in the streets.
Young men congregate to ogle the girls who have overdressed to buy food at the vendor stands.
Not far from the Obreg¢n nightlife is the colonial town of Alamos, a day adventurer's dream.
With cobbled streets and sprawling houses surrounded by lush foliage and the occasional donkey, Alamos offers a very affordable alternative to the tourist mistake of shopping at the local market.
If you must shop, do so in Alamos.
Why spend your money on manufactured clothes when you can buy remnants of Mexico's Spanish colonial history?
When hard-pressed for money, residents of Alamos are known to sell family antiques to the popular downtown shops.
Adriana and I walked through the multiple rooms of a store called El Niche. We peered into glass cases full of old jewelry and war metals. We looked at silver tea sets and objects that once belonged in colonial homes.
The experience leaves you feeling like Indiana Jones on the search for the Holy Grail in an Alice In Wonderland labyrinth full of museum-quality artifacts.
Mexico, a country rife with history, struggle and poverty, has so much more to offer than beachside tourist traps for the elite who like their mixed drinks with colorful umbrellas.
With a little bit of Spanish and a student identification card, you can obtain a 50 percent discount on most of your bus tickets, travel to obscure locations, buy relics from the past and taste strange new things.
The total cost of the 10-day trek - including travel expenses to and from Albuquerque, food, alcohol, a haircut, a small shopping spree, jewelry and a certain unnamed artifact securely taped to the bottom of my backpack - was $255.
Tips for trekking through Mexico
Travel to the border via Greyhound. Tickets are discounted if you purchase them seven days in advance.
Visit the restaurant Vive Mexico in Juarez where for $6 you can watch Aztecs dance out the history of Mexico.
Try tuna, a fruit whose chewy seeds and sugary taste make you forget that it comes from the flower of a cactus plant.
Study up on the Spanish colonial period so you know what's what when trying to purchase antiques and artifacts.
Learn a little bit of Spanish. It is, after all, a language of romance.
