I know. Call me INSANE, call me Crazy. There is all this mass killings and murders and all kinds of what not. I flew down to Veracruz to give a talk, stayed overnight and flew back, but I gotta admit when my flight was touching down in Monterrey on a transfer to my Houston connection, I felt a little panic like Mikhail Baryshnikov in that movie White Nights. Where they are suddenly landing in Russia, a country he had previously fled and he panics. Anyway, we stopped over in Monterrey. People were gracious in the airport and then back to Houston, which feels as foreign to me sometimes as Mexico, before arriving home at 12 a.m.
The mexican situation is very similar in my mind to what we saw in the 80's with gang wars in specific areas of the U.S.. Lots of good people trying to live with the bad press. Lots of bad happening in a few specific areas. I still admit that I don't feel comfortable driving out from the city in Mexico into small villages, which is the big loss for me, since that is where you really bond with the people and the culture.
You can still see some beautiful sites. As we were flying home, we left about 6 p.m. (scheduled for 5 pm departure so a 6 pm departure is about right in my experience) and we flew past Pico de Orizaba, the third highest mountain in North America and the highest peak in Mexico. It is a stratovolcano that hosts year around snow fields and glaciers. A beautiful peak, a spectacular site. I got to see it in the mid day with the sun and snow on it and this shot was at dusk with it rising up above this super cool layer of cumulus clouds.
The picture does not do it justice.
Go see some of the sites of Mexico sometime even is you have to do it from air. Stay away from the borders. I find border towns way overrated anyway. May as well leave them to the narcos.
