This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
I decide to stay one more night in Kingsville, frankly out of nothing more than the desire to put off the crossing into Mexico. I don't know why this part of my journey is intimidating me so much, except that it's unknown, more alien than anywhere I've been before. And it's easy here, with a comfortable room and wi-fi and all mod cons. But I'm resolved it'll only be one more night.
I've had a bit more money come through from web design work I've been doing on the road, and when I check my balance it's a good bit healthier than I expected, so I have an acceptable financial safety net. That makes me feel safer about the changes to come.
The bugs here are unbelievable. On the way down with Don we drove through great clouds of butterflies, apparently passing through as part of their migration pattern, and Kingsville is swarming with beetles, flies and insects of all kinds.
The outside wall of the McDonalds on the first night was covered in different kinds of moths, and the parking lot of the Whataburger was a virtual sea of crickets and huge cockroaches, hopping and scuttling, so many that it was impossible to avoid stepping on one with every other step. I remarked to one of the staff that it was like a biblical plague and she said "That's just South Texas, sir."
I count eleven different kinds of fly and beetle on the window of my motel room, and when I step out into the warm night for a smoke I have to whip the door shut behind me to avoid dozens of them getting in. The night is alive with buzzing and clicking and humming, some of them creating an extraordinary resonant sound I can't believe comes from anything smaller than a football. A big green beetle clicks loudly against the shade of one of my lamps all night.
I decide to part with two more things from my backpack. My Camelbak water reservoir with its drinking tube is just extra weight, if a minor convenience when I'm walking with the pack on, but my Trangia camping stove is something I've been struggling with dropping for a couple of months.
I've maybe used it a dozen times since I started travelling, it's bulky and heavy and obtaining fuel for it is a wasteful process - I can only carry a few uses of it, so I have to buy a full bottle of denatured alcohol and throw most of it away. Granted it gives me more options as far as food (and the option of morale-boosting hot coffee) and I will be heading into areas where I'm more likely to use it, but these days pretty much anywhere I can get uncooked food I can get packaged stuff too, and I don't have the space or facilities to keep uncooked food with me for any length of time anyway. I give both to Muhammed.
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