Driving Directions In Mexico

Driving directions in Mexico can sometimes guide a driver to the road that heads to Mexico City. At other times, driving directions in Mexico might point a car towards the road for a popular beach, such as Mazatlan. On occasion, driving directions in Mexico have directed a visitor to a local commercial establishment.

This story relates a time when a visitor in the City of Tijuana wanted directions. She wanted to know where to find a shop that sold watermelons. She asked her daughter-in-law to help her with her search.

The woman who desired a watermelon did not speak Spanish. She also had only a limited command of English. She had been born in Iran, and she had spent most of her adult life in Iran. She enjoyed coming to Tijuana, because the small shops there were quite a bit like the shops in Iran.

Neither woman was driving. The woman from Iran had come to the United States with her youngest son. He was the driver of the car that they rode in Tijuana. He would need to hear about any response to a request for driving directions in Mexico.

The driver proceeded to pull-up next to people he thought might know where they could find a watermelon. He expected his wife to get directions. She used her very limited Spanish. She asked, "Donde esta sandia?"

The one native born American among the watermelon-hunting adults did know the Spanish word for watermelon. She had once lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That city is next to the Sandia Mountains. Those mountains take-on the color of a watermelon when they are hit by the setting sun.

In other words, a watermelon was one of the few fruits that could have been easily located by those Tijuana visitors. The only other fruit to which the mountains of northern New Mexico bore a resemblance was the apple. The early Spanish settlers had noted the color of a second set of mountains. After looking at a mountain range not far from the Sandias, they had felt that those red mountains resembled apples.

Thanks to the love of the Spanish settlers for fresh fruit, and thanks to their observations about the color of the mountains, one woman from Iran managed to find a watermelon. The directions provided by a number of different Mexicans led her to a store that sold watermelons. Other directions led her group to a site where they could eat feta cheese, bread and watermelon.