4/25 Chihuahua City

We took a walking tour of the market area with Teresa, our guide, this morning. Amongst other things like food stands and clothing stores, we saw shops that sold pinatas. We were surprised to see the new style pinatas. See below. There were also spiderman in both black and red suits and every other cartoon character you can think of. They make the pinatas there. This is what a "naked" pinata looks like.

We visited a cathedral. Outside the church was this memorial to the hundreds of women of Juarez, Mexico, who were tortured and killed since around 1992(?). These women were spoken of in the Vagina Monologues. According to our guide, the Mexican government has sent troops to help protect the women. She says things are better now. We have no way to know ourselves.

On our way back to our hotel, we pass a plaza and saw a bike "locked" to a post. This is how the police secure their vehicles when they go on their walk arounds. The crime rate is so low they don't have much other use for their handcuffs:)

We went to lunch on our own. We walked around and spotted a small shop where locals were eating. We were trying to understand the menu when the lady there said she spoke english. So she helped us choose some lunch. As soon as she did, she left us on our own. Duane had a chile-relleno burrito and Arleen had a hamburger on a torilla. Both were different and delicious. We spoke broken spanish to the man behind the counter and he spoke good spanish back to us. We managed to communicate and learned about the other items on the menu. Being with the locals, on our own, was a highlight of our trip.

We went to a home-hosted dinner at Blanca's. She has a very nice, if small, modern home in the city. 3 bedroom 2 bath with a nice backyard. (when she showed us her backyard, her turtle showed up to greet us...which was a surprise to her since he had been missing for some time). Her english was very good, so we were able to talk about lots of stuff. She had recently lost her son and mother, but she did not let any of that dampen her spirits with us. Her husband was out with her grandson at their weekend farm patch, where they have horses and goats and chickens and fruit trees.

Next we visited the home of Pancho Villa (turns out that was not his real name, he started using it after the real Pancho, the leader of his gang, died) Depending on who you talk to, he was either a hero of the revolution of 1910, or/and an outlaw or bandit. He probably was both.

After the revolution he was assissinated because he spoke out against the new president. He was set up by a man impersonating a candy vendor, who went up to his car, see picture below, and when Pancho stopped to buy the candy, the snipers opened fire. Note, the car was a Dodge, which had a star of David on the front, because the company was owned by Jewish brothers at that time.

This is a machine gun that was mounted on a saddle. Duane says this is how they transported it, but Arleen thinks it would be cool to see someone shooting a machine gun from horseback.;)