My last couple of days in Texas involved a wide variety of activities. On the 2nd November my sister took me to see a play at a local high school, called “Run for Your Wife”. It is a British comedy, which had been adapted to make it more apt for American audiences, with place names being changed. However there were a few things which the “translator” hadn’t understood in the original script, and had therefore not translated… things which my sister and I DID understand, causing us to laugh when nobody else did!

The following day, Saturday, we all headed out to a State Park about 90 minutes away, near the village of Bastrop – an area of woods and rolling hills where my brother-in-law was organising an orienteering event the following spring. Before leaving for Bastrop, I saw first-hand the challenge of doing activities with young kids in tow – my eldest nephew threw a terrible tantrum and refused to leave the house. He was eventually persuaded by his more enthusiastic younger brother (who was dressed for the occasion in a T shirt that proclaimed him to be an official “course vetter” for the orienteering event). The park was quiet and attractive – apart from hiking and enjoying the area, we needed to check the alignment of a new footpath that was being added to the orienteering map that was being created and printed.

4462 RTW 3 Nov 1990 - Bastrop State Park, Texas

4463 hr RTW 3 Nov 1990 - Bastrop State Park, Texas

4464 RTW 3 Nov 1990 - Bastrop State Park, Texas

4465 RTW 3 Nov 1990 - Bastrop State Park, Texas

Back in Houston, I tested out my new shortwave radio, and to everyone’s surprise it easily outperformed a much larger (though older) radio which my brother-in-law had used for many years on his overseas postings. On his radio the BBC World Service faded in and out, whereas mine held the channel very well, thanks to its phase lock loop.

On the afternoon of my last full day in Houston my sister was playing her flute in a concert given by Houston Sinfonietta – a local amateur symphony orchestra. I was put in charge of keeping my eldest nephew quiet during the performance – a pencil and a piece of paper were the only weapons placed at my disposal to carry out this mission…

Then, suddenly…it was time for my real mission to start. Early the following morning (5th November) my brother-in-law took me down to the Trailways bus station in the centre of Houston, enthusiastically shook my hand, and went off to work.

That was it. I was suddenly very much on my own. I tried not to think how many months it would be before I saw a familiar face again…

A three hour bus ride got me to San Antonio where I changed to another bus for Laredo on the Mexican border. On the way down I got chatting to the man next to me – he was a Texan, heading for Mexico. He wasn’t an obvious tourist or backpacker, and he was a little cagey about what his trip was for, but eventually he admitted that it was to “enjoy the señoritas”…

After two hours I was staring down at the Rio Grande, trying to shake off a nasty headache. Getting a bus from Laredo straight through to Monterrey didn’t seem to be possible, but I was able to queue for a local bus ticket to Nuevo Laredo on the other side of the border.

This local bus didn’t stop for any immigration controls (either the US or the Mexican side of the bridge) and I unexpectedly found myself in the bus terminal in Nuevo Laredo without any passport stamp. This struck me as odd, but presumably it is a informal border. I changed some dollars to pesos, and bought a ticket to Monterrey. It was 11pm by the time I arrived at the bus terminal in Mexico’s great northern city.

Time to start using my [very rudimentary] Spanish! Though I learnt some basic grammar and pronunciation from a book and cassette tapes 2 years ago while working in Libya, I have hardly had any opportunity to practice it until now. But apparently it is intelligible enough to allow me to get a room in a nearby hotel and order myself some food in the terminal before crashing out for my first, and very weary, night in Latin America.