Mexico without a Passport

Before I forget again, I just wanted to mention that on the way to El Paso we had half a tank of fuel left. So we stopped in Van Horn. As I mentioned previously, we paid $3.27/gallon. But the Pilot/Flying J station was $3.39.

So our luck: the fuel station around the block from our campground is only $2.43/gallon. 96¢ per gallon cheaper than Pilot and 84¢ /gallon less than we paid. That's almost $40 we could have saved. But who's to know what's down the road.

Okay, enough sour grapes although we did buy some grapes today. 😁 This town has 7 Walmart supercenters, 9 Walmart food marts, and two regular Walmarts. I'm in heaven!

We were going to go to the Holocaust Museum today. Closed! The Tigua Indian Cultural Center. Closed! The Border Patrol Museum. Closed!

So we went to Chamizal National Memorial. 

It is run by the National Park Service which has a really cute mascot.

The memorial commemorates the peaceful settlement of a dispute between the US and Mexico that resulted from the natural change of course of the Rio Grande between the cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. The request for a settlement of the dispute was made by President Juárez of Mexico to President Lincoln, and the order to resolve it was made by President Kennedy and the treaty finished after his death by President Johnson. It is located on Cordova Island, also known as Isla de Córdoba, and is not a true island, but is located on both sides of the current channel of the Rio Grande in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. In 1899 the United States and Mexico dug a channel across the heel of the horseshoe-shaped peninsula to control the flood-prone Rio Grande, but left the original riverbed, which wound to the north around the island, as the international boundary. Thus the 385-acre tract was part of Mexico, though it lay north of the Rio Grande, for most of the twentieth century. During prohibition Cordova Island was a notorious haven for smugglers; it was almost completely surrounded by American soil, but lay outside the city limits of Juárez. The famous Hole in the Wall, a saloon and gambling parlor, flourished just a few yards from the border in defiance of United States and Mexican authorities, before it was finally torn down in January 1931. In 1963 the treaty that settled the Chamizal Dispute transferred 193 acres on Cordova Island to the United States in exchange for an equal area further downstream. In the 1990s the channel of the Rio Grande bisected the old island from east to west, and Interstate Highway 110 crossed it from north to south.

Anyway, enough history. The memorial is the actual border between the two countries on the islands. On one side you are in the US, on the other you are in Mexico.

Nancy walked onto the Mexican side (without a passport, customs, or a bridge to cross). As soon as she did she got this message from T-MOBILE, our cellular carrier.

But you know, we still haven't seen the actual Rio Grande! Maybe tomorrow.