Highway 45 to Parral is relentless. Flanked by wild mountains, plateaux, towers and table-tops, the road advances, on and on, on and on. Swirling flocks of black crows break the monotony. Pale white butterflies search vainly amid the yellow grasses, sand and parched scrubs. The tough little desert flowers give nothing away.
Sporadic pools of marshy water turn green under the dying sun. Slender horses graze hopefully. Gnarled posts and rusty barbed wire fences demarcate the territory. And ruined houses sprout weeds from their crumbling mud-brick walls, lost in time, lost in space.
Hours pass between settlements. Nowhere towns of dust and rock are slung with black telegraph wires and desperate structures. Roosters scratch mournfully.
At a cross-roads called Rodeo, the locals have actually gathered for a Saturday night rodeo. A sea of pickup trucks surrounds a busy arena where cowboys and cowgirls glug down beer voraciously, cheering on the horses and their riders.
We cross the town and blow a tire on the rocks. As day fades to night we’re stuck in the accursed Rodeo while everyone scratches their heads. It takes two hours and several mechanics to change it. But by then I am completely numb.
We arrive in Parral – Hidalgo del Parral, as it’s properly known – close to midnight. The temperature has dropped dramatically and ice is forming on the pavements. Breath, vapour and shivering fog everywhere.
I check into a motel near the bus station and grab a burger from across the street. I eat and watch cable TV- the closing moments of some overrated Tolstoy drama. Then I crash.
I wake early and make the rounds, discovering I’ve gained an hour thanks to mountain time. Parral is an historic town that’s overlooked by a crumbling old mine an a hill – La Prieta – part museum, part ruin, with an abundance of rusty equipment, dilapidated buildings and poisonous Datura plants thriving in the desolation.
But Parral is most famous as the place where Pancho Villa met his end under a spectacular hail of hot lead. A museum marks the spot where his vehicle came to a crashing conclusion, thoroughly punctured with assassins’ bullet holes and closely resembling Swiss cheese.
Viva Pancho Villa! Viva the Centaur of the North!
The government claims his body his was removed from the town and later installed in the Revolution Monument in Tabacalera, Mexico City. The locals claim he never left and can be found in a nearby cemetery.
I spend a few hours consulting the hoteliers and snapping pictures of the buildings, then I board a bus and continue my journey north to Chihuahua, five hours away.
