We stayed at the hotel for a week. The room was clean and comfortable. We had a little problem at check in. I made reservations online and they couldn't find their paperwork. I printed out my reservation info. and it helped to clear up the problem. Other than that, I was very pleased with the staff and the rooms. They had a shuttle bus to and from the American Consulate. The hotel is within walking distance of a few nice restuarants as well.

Hands down the best burritos in town. You place and pay for your order and are handed a piece of paper where your order has been hand written. you then go over to where the guys are wrapping burritos you hand him your order and watch him am make the fasted burrito you have ever seen. all the while you see a group of women making fresh tortillas behind him and watch as they deliver a fresh stack to his station. You can take the burritos to go or sit and eat at one of the picnic tables available.

The mexican football team played in ciudad juarez for the first time in twenty years and with a very small stadium (30,000) it was quite hard to get a ticket for a decent price. Fortunately I was able to get into their training session the day before the match and these are some photos I took that day.

It is an average to high priced hotel that includes a continental breakfast. This is a four stars hotel in which we had our SMI conference for AIESEC so its standard its pretty good and it also has a couple conference rooms available. The beds are very comfortable and the rooms have AC, cable TV and apparently they have wireless internet too. Overall I think this is quite a decent place to stay if you're coming to Juarez and the budget is not a problem. It also has a good location, near several clubs, bars, cafes and the "Pueblito Mexicano".

San Martin is pretty much your regular old style bar. It is what we call here in Mexico a "Cantina". However, this place is apparently an attempt at a middle high to high class cantina hehe The palce was decent enough for me, and I had a good time as we were doing a "going away" thing for a friend of mine that is leaving for Monterrey. The thing that disturbed me is the attitude of the guy at the entrance, but then again that's how most of those dudes are. Apparently they don't like people with a personality hehe. The place is very much normal and you can find everything you might drink at a bar, and also this palce is known for selling a realitvely cheap "caguama" which is one of those big beers. This place is only a bar, and the music is certainly the usual songs people listen to in Mexico while their drunk. Apparently this place is very trendy at the moment.

This saturday the second take of our very own music festival took place. It is international because it is aimed for all the people who live in the El Paso - Cd. Juarez area. also because there is always one guest band from outside of Mexico. The name Rock del Rio (Rock from the River) is very appropiate because of the zone we live in, and so the slogan for the event is "un rio nos divide, la musica nos une" which means "a river divides us, the music unites us".

The first take of this festival had the performances of Panteon Rococo (top Ska band from Mexico city), Tolidos (from Juarez, I think), Sussie 4, and Babasonicos (from Argentina). This was a good choice because it covered a band from outside of Mexico and also electronic, rock, ska and alternative music. However, this second take had a much better line-up even if not that much people turned up for it. The publicity will certainly need to improve (which did improve from the first to the second take) along with the roots of the festival in the city so more people will enjoy it.

This second festival had the local band Gruis Spectra as the opening act(at around 6pm), followed by Mexican band Volovan. The third band was from Chile, Lucybell. Then the big names started popping up: Gusana Ciega, which is almost a classic band here in Mexico now, Salon Victoria (From Mexico City, to cover our ska cuota) and Kinky from Monterrey which gave the festival its touch of electronic/rock/northern/whatever music.

The Main acts and crowd dragging bands came on until late at night at around 1 am. Fobia, which is about to celebrate thir 20 years of existence made its performance as the crowd went crazy. The closing act was another well known Mexican band: Molotov who played well until 3 in the morning bringing the music festival to its end.

I certainyl enjoyed this maratonic concert, even if the organization did leave room for improvement. I can only hope that next year the event will continue to grow and bring even bigger bands, and why not start getting some nice publicity over the years so it can become a huge event.

www.rockdelrio.com
www.myspace.com/festivalrockdelrio

I like this place. We decided to go to tabasco's to celebrate my birthday, even if none of us had been there before. It is a nice place to go have some drinks. We were only three for my birthday and we enjoyed ourselves there. Tabasco's is a bar, but they also sell food, they have a few main courses and they mostly sell snacks and that sort of stuff like nachos. The beer is averaged priced at around $25 pesos. During the evening they have a live band playing. the band we got to see played all sorts of songs from the 70's and 80's. It was rock, but soft, Beetles, Creedence, Pink Floyd and the likes. What we liked the most was that they had some sort of event from Coors beer where they had some girls dancing around the place and afterwards they went through the tables giving people some coors beer in little glasses made of ice, which of course melted rather quickly in our hands.

Unfortunately, over the last years, Ciudad Juarez became quite (in)famous because of the large number of unsolved female homicides. Apparently I have to tell you about this, and definately I'm not proud (or even close) of this.

So when in Ciudad Juarez, you talk about the female homicides , you're talking about a series of murders that add up to 460 murders and 600 missing persons, sin 1993. The worst part about this is that there's little information of motives or even being close to finding the person responsible for them.

For some time, the supposed murderer was "The Egyptian" Abdel Latiff Shariff, and he was caught in 1995 and arrested. As of 1999 he is supposed to be spending 20 years in prison for his crimes (although I think he's dead now), however this murders continued after he was arrested. Allegedly he payed some people named "Los Rebeldes" to keep the murders going so he couldn't be charged.

Among the persons and organizations that have helped on the investigation we can find the Mexican Procuraduria General de la Republica (PGR), the American FBI, Several foreign investigators and Criminalists and other organizations.

According to the Organization of American States's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights:
    The victims of these crimes have preponderantly been young women, between 17 and 22 years of age. Many were students, and most were maquiladora [workers in foreign owned factories]. A number were relative newcomers to Ciudad Juarez who had migrated from other areas of Mexico. The victims were generally reported missing by their families, with their bodies found days or months later abandoned in vacant lots or outlying areas. In most of these cases there were signs of sexual violence, abuse, torture or in some cases mutilation.

As of August 2006, the investigation of these murders has ended, because the government decided to drop it. These crimes continue unsolved, sadly enough.

As I have just made a blog about the typical food of Ciudad Juarez par excellence, the burrito, I think it would be great if I added a couple of reviews of the top places in Ciudad Juarez to eat burritos. Out of them all, El Burrotote its probably my favourite place to eat burritos. Most of the places in Ciudad Juarez have the same menus for burritos. El Burrotote differs from the rest of the Burrito selling places in the fact that it is just one place, and not a series of establishments, and that makes them unique. Also this places makes honor to its name because they sell BIG burritos. El Burrotote means the big donkey as opposed to burrito which means small donkey. So when you go there, you can expect to eat bigger and better burritos than the ones you can buy elsewhere. I rated this place as exceptional instead of good (like I rated the others) because they simple are my favourite place to eat burritos...just because they're BIG.

As I have just made a blog about the typical food of Ciudad Juarez par excellence, the burrito, I think it would be great if I added a couple of reviews of the top places in Ciudad Juarez to eat burritos. Burritos Crisostomo is probably the most famous place in Ciudad Juarez to eat Burritos. Most of the places in Ciudad Juarez offer the same prices and same choices for your burritos, so the menus are pretty much alike. Burritos Crisostomo, has earned for some reason the best reputation from them all. Their burritos are in fact quite good and they have several locations where you can go buy burritos to take home or to eat there. So if you ever come to Ciudad Juarez, this is definately one of the best options for eating Burritos, and believe me...you must eat them at least once. The only problem with Burritos Crisostomo is that they're so famous, they usually close very early because they run out of food to sell, so you'll probably be better off eating them for breakfast.

The burrito is definately one of the classic mexican foods, at least for us who live in the north. The burrito consists of a flour tortilla that is wrapped around whatever food you decided to fill it with. The most common fillings are of meat, beans and cheese...actually, almost all of the burritos include beans because they kind of are the base of it, but there are certainly a lot of combinations for the fillings. Oh and if you buy a burrito outside of Mexico, it probably isnt a burrito.

Although the origin of the name "burrito" is still unknown, this is the official story for the creation of the burritos and how they obtained their name: From the times of the mexican revolution (from 1910 to 1921), there was a man that had a buisness in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. His name was Juan Mendez and he had a food stand. He had the ingenious idea of making big wheat flour tortillas and filling them up with his food (which he wanted to keep warm) and then covering them up with towels to keep them hot. Apparently he had so much deliveries to make, that he decided to buy a donkey to carry his food. Burrito literally means "little donkey". So with time his food became so famous that people started coming from everywhere to try the food of the little donkey...and so the "burrito" was born as a typical food of Ciudad Juarez.

The Tarahumaras are the indigenous people that inhabit in the state of Chihuahua. They call themselves Raramuri, which in their language would be something like "those with the light feet" and that makes reference to one of their oldest traditions: long distance running. Even if now they can be found all around the cities of Chihuahua, they mostly inhabit the southeast of the state. Since the arrival of Spanish explorers they retreated to the Sierra Madre Occidental, which is also known by us as the Sierra Tarahumara. Their current population has an estimate of 50,000.

Most of the Tarahumaras still have their classic clothing for which their known. Their shirts or blouses of bright colors, most of the time stamped with flowers. Women use skirts, with very bright colors too and actually, they wear several skirts at the same time which makes them even more colorful. They also wear sandals which they've been making out of tires lately, and finally there is one of their most distinctive attires is their "Koyera" which is a head band they use to keep their hair in its place. A lot of times they might also be seen simply bare-footed.

Their religion distinguishes between the Raramuri and everyone else, and according to some leyend, they were condemned by God to be poor forever. This is to be taken as some sort of vow of poverty, and that explains why they live with the minimum necessary and why they won't accumulate wealth, they also value people way more than they value material things.

Ok, apparently it is time for me to talk about our University here in Ciudad Juarez. I have taken several photos during my summer courses, and I will definately take more of them later, when they finish working on our buildings. At the moment the pictures might look really dirty, or the place really empty, take into consideration that it is vacation period and that they're rebuilding a part of our computer center.

Now I can start. Our local university is called the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez (UACJ) and it is completely public, which makes for extremely low tuition fees, although they're not as low as UNAM's (but that's another story). The UACJ is allegedly in the Top 4 Universities in the country, I'm not so sure about that, but they're certainly the best one in the state of Chihuahua and with an infrastructure that asks nothing of most private universities (at least in Mexico).

Even if the university is located completely on this city, it is divided into four institutes and a campus in the nearby city of Casas Grandes (Campus Nuevo Casas Grandes or CNCG). These four institutes are each located separately in a different point of the city (well, almost). This has been like that since the start, apparently this was done with the intention of separating the students to avoid problems being generated by us.

The four institutes are:

•  IIT or Instituto de Ingenieria y Tecnologia (Institute of Engeneering and Technology) and has 9 careers available: Physics, Mathematics, Industrial and sistems engeneering, Mechatronics, Manufacture engeneering, civil engeneering, Electronics, Digital systems and comunications, and computer systems.
• Located next to IIT, is IADA or Instituto de Arquitectura Diseño y Arte (Institute of Architecture, design and art). Amazingly enough (at least for me) this institute has 6 careers available: Architecture, Graphic design, Interior Design, Industrial Design(god knows what that's about), Visual Arts, and Music.
• The biggest institute (because it also holds the CCU or University Culture Centre) is definately ICB or Instituto de Ciencias Biomedicas (Institute of Biomedic Sciences). It currently has 9 careers (and 8 specialties): Biologia, Nursing (or whatever you study to be a nurse =S), Physical Training, Medicine, Nutrition, Optometry, Chemistry, Veterinary and Dentist.
• Finally is my, oh so beautiful, ICSA or Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Administracion (Institute of Social Sciences and Administration) home of some of the most unusual careers. We beat all of them by having 11, yes we have eleven careers(!): Accounting, Turism, Business Administration, Law, Education, History, Hispanic and Mexican Literature, Social Work, Economy, Sociology and of course mine; Psychology.

Well it can't all be flowers, chocolate, beer or sex... there's got to be a bad side to Ciudad Juarez so I've decided inaugurate this section by writing about one of the not so bad, yet bad things. The Juarez Cartel, drugs are not so bad you see...especially once you realize that money laundry businesses kind of support this city's economy.

The Juarez Cartel is a very powerful and famous drug trafficking based right here, in your favourite (yeah, sure) city, Ciudad Juárez. Though apparently (according to wikipedia) it has transformed into La Alianza Triangulo de Oro, or The golden Triangle Alliance, because the three leaders are from three different states in the north of Mexico: Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa.

It most famous leader was Amado Carrillo who died in 1997 when a plastic surgery got complicated. With Amado Carrillo at the helm, they were estimated to be bringing about 50% of the drungs in the US, making around $200 million dollars a week and in personal gain for him he had amassed around $25 billion dollars, so just make the math. On the bright side, I knew his son when I was in elementary school a very wealthy yet, simple and friendly lad.

It is weird that in this state, where apparently nothing happens, there are so many people to choose from as Outstanding Sons (and daughters...and anything inbetween) of Chihuahua. Some of these I didn't know where from here, you learn something new everyday right? We have lots of comedians here in Chihuahua, apparently we're funny people.

The Sons:

• Agustín Melgar - Defender of the Nation at Chapultepec. Died as a young lad.
• David Alfaro Siqueiros - Muralist and painter. Born in Camargo. UNAM has some of his murals.
• Enrique Carbajal (Sebastián) - He makes sculptures out of geometrical shapes, uses mathematic equations. Made the sculture at Reforma in Mexico City.
• Teófilo Borunda - Politician, Was ambassador and governor among other things.
• Manuel Gómez Morín - Founder of PAN, one of the strongest political parties in Mexico.
• José Fuentes Mares - Philosopher, Historian and Writer. My University gives an award with his name.
• Pascual Orozco - One of them guys who started the Mexican Revolution.
• Eduardo Nájera - Basketball player. Used to play for Dallas on the NBA, not sure what he's up to now.
• Omar Chaparro - Comedian. Used to have a TV show.
• Gilberto Gless - Comedian too. He makes impressions.
• Caballo Dorado - Musical band that is kind of country. I don't like them.
• Manuel ¨El Loco¨ Valdés - He's a comedian and quite famous on his time. Born in Ciudad Juarez.
• Anthony Quinn - Actor born in Chihuahua. Need I say anything else?
• Eddie Guerrero - WWE Wrestler.

The Daughters:

• Consuelo Duval - Actress and Comedian. Has been on some famous Mexican TV shows.
• Marisela Rodríguez (María Barracuda) - Musician and singer. I like her. Good songs.
• Vanessa Guzmán - Model and Actress. Miss Mexico 1995.

Err... apparently we need more daughters. Donations anyone?

Next come our adoptive sons who, apparently, owe themselves to us.

The Adoptive Sons:

• Ramón Valdés - Comedian. Don Ramon from El Chavo del 8.
• Germán Valdés (Tin-Tan) - Comedian, apparently is a family thing. Grew up here in Ciudad Juarez.
• Alberto Aguilera Valadez (Juan Gabriel) - Singer who grew up here in Juarez. Quite gay I must say.
• Doroteo Arango (Francisco Villa) - Do I need to say anything about him? Really?