Approching El Paso - spotting a roadrunner

The ride from El Paso to San Antonio was the longest leg of the trip so far, but for the second day in a row we were lucky to have good cloud cover with occasional rain. Instead of hitting tempetures in the 100s we were hovering in the high 80s and low 90s. We left El Paso at 6 a.m. in the morning and arrived in San Antonio at 9:00 p.m. We made ample stops along the way and even stop for a real sit-down meal, which is a rare occurrence as we scramble from stop to stop in a un-air-conditioned 1977 Crown school bus.

El Paso, a border town, was spectacular to see from the “scenic” route we took to transition from Rte 10 to the Unitarian Church on the other side of the hill. The line blurred between the US side of the border and Mexican side as the lights flickered in homes and businesses. It seemed funny that an imaginary line in the sands or along the Rio Grande in this case would separate people and cultures, Our world is still a nationalistic “our’s and their’s” kind of place. The Cuba Caravan hopes to change that.

Our hosts in El Paso were delights. The young couple, John and Rachel, and their 2 year old son welcomed our rag tag group into their lives for a night, and would have been content to stay up all night and chat about politics and issues of the world. Their three dogs also greeted us warmly and made their rounds often for some good old fashion petting from the new strangers in their home.

Get up time was set for 5:00 a.m. The coffee maker was programmed so the fresh brew would greet us upon waking, but like most VCR’s and fancy fangled programmable appliances you needed a doctorate from MIT to program the coffee maker to do what you wanted it to do. We needed to manually start the coffee maker, and the coffee was ready by the time we were about to roll, and that was just fine.

Our hosts woke up to see us off.