This is probably the most entertaining New York Times story I've read in a very long while. The Travel section (of all sections) reports that the Hñahñus Indians of Hidalgo state communally operate Parque EcoAlberto, which for 200 pesos a pop offers a hike that simulates the crossing of the U.S.-Mexico border. The hike comes complete with a shady guide, a raid by sirens, and a mysterious 5-year-old boy that emerges from the brush to led extreme-entertainment tourists to safety:
They advised us to be brave, to remember our ancestors and to hit the ground if we heard gunshots.
We’d been walking down a gravel road for 10 minutes when people started shouting and tearing off into the dark. “Vamos rápido!” they shouted. “Vamos corriendo! Hasta el puente! Apúrense!” (“Let’s get moving! To the bridge! Get going!”) Behind us, headlights and the police drew nearer.
“Run!” Mr. Santiago shouted, frantically directing us toward a concrete bridge at the bottom of the sloping road. “Shut off that light, they’re coming. Fast, fast. Damn it, shut off that light!”
Sirens whooped. We scrambled down a hill of loose dirt, tripping and stumbling over rocks and gouges in the ground. We ended up in a mire along the Tula River, ankle-deep in mud and water.
Far out! The Hñahñus know a bit about what it's like to make the actual run across the border: a majority of their people live en el otro lado, mostly in Nevada, the story says. The piece ends, amazingly, with the phone number and website for Parque EcoAlberto, which suggests that the NYT is endorsing the idea of its pale New England readership doing some extreme eco-tourism in the central Mexican highlands by actually paying to "play" illegal immigrant and relive, in some mediated form, the experiences of their construction workers and housekeepers. What. Is the world. Coming to?
* Photo by David Zeiger.