Have you ever wanted to get shot at by police, beaten up by narcs, and chased through a swamp of raw sewage? Well then, we have the tourist attraction for you! No, really.
Two years ago, when I first heard about the “border-crossing experience” in Hidalgo, Mexico, I did a double take.
“A what?” I asked.
“A border-crossing experience,” my friend said. “You pretend to cross into the United States illegally.”
“People do this? Willingly?”
“Yep.”
Freddie Agustin explains why anyone would want to do a mock illegal border crossing. (Photo: Andrew Rothschild)
Obviously, I had to go check it out.
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By day, the Parque EcoAlberto is an amusement park run by the local Hñähñu community in Hidalgo, Mexico. It offers ziplining, kayaking, and water flumes. The park contains several pools, a restaurant, and a bar, and in the evenings, couples stroll the grounds and canoodle in the shadows. But every Saturday night, EcoAlberto holds a truly bizarre, immersive experience — the “Caminata Nocturna” — a border-crossing simulation.
The experience was started by Freddie Agustin and a group of other locals who had crossed the border illegally multiple times and were trying to convince other people in theHñähñu community — which has an obscenely high unemployment rate and an absurdly low average annual salary of $10,000 — to stop going north to seek employment.
Seeing this guy scared us silly right from the start. (Photo: Andrew Rothschild)
“We started this because so many of our people were dying while trying to cross the border,” Agustin told me. “We needed to show the young people who wanted to cross what it would actually be like and to stop them from taking the trip.” While it may have started as a unique public service, the Caminata Nocturna is now being offered to tourists as the ultimate local experience.
On the night I showed up, there were 10 others, including one couple who (bizarrely) insisted on making out throughout the ordeal. Apparently, pretending to get shot at and beaten to death excites some people.
The experience for tourists lasts between three and four hours. For locals, it’s a seven-hour ordeal in which you are chased by police cars, run through cactus fields, pursued by criminal gangs, and even set upon by ghosts of Native Mexicans past. The staging is perfect. The actors are terrifying, and while the bullets are supposed to be blanks, they felt very real.
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“I feel like I’m in a Vin Diesel movie,” I gasped while hiding from the federales in some brambles.
This is where things get real. (Photo: Andrew Rothschild)
The experience is … terrifying. And enlightening. In the end I was exhausted, filthy, and ready to go home. And so, so thankful that I don’t have to do this crossing for real.
Thank you to the Muddy Boot Travel Company for arranging this experience.
ED NOTE: Here’s the thing about the “coyote:illegal immigrant experience” in mexico: I went because it sounded just too crazy and effed up for words. I left crying. With a deep respect for anyone who risks their lives to feed their family. What they don’t tell you is that every woman who does it has to get on birth control because they will likely get raped at least once. You are beaten and robbed and… Treated worse than a dog. What would you do to feed/support your family? WATCH THIS NOW… And pls share