No Chain: El Paso, Texas

I found a little piece of heaven in El Paso, Texas. After 3 weeks of traveling across the country sleeping wrapped up in a sleeping bag on the ground of tents, school gyms, churches, synagogues and people’s homes we got to check in to the Holiday Inn! A real bed, our own showers and ESPN for 2 whole days; all thanks to the good people of the Texas Tech school of Medicine. We rode the 45 miles into the El Paso from Las Cruces rather quickly and actually finished as a group of about 20 which was a lot of fun. We had a big presentation at the med school over lunch which was well attended by a lot of prominent faculty and then had the rest of the day to “prepare” for our off day in El Paso. We hit the pool, gym and went out for dinner as a group. The group ended the night with a room party back at the Holiday Inn until hotel security shut us down around 2 am; it was a lot of fun for everyone to unwind a little bit before crashing into our glorious soft comfy beds! Our off day started off with a real Mexican breakfast including my first taste of horchata, my new favorite drink, it’s a milky looking concoction of rice, almonds, cinnamon, lime zest and sugar (since this original encounter I have searched out and successfully found more horchata every day…im drinking it right now....I may be an addict) . After our big breakfast, we got some errands done before hitting the road for 2 hours to drive to White Sands national park where we played the rest of day. We pulled back into our hotel around 11 pm as the lights of Juarez, Mexico (one the most dangerous cities in the world) lit up the night sky just across the interstate from our hotel, El Paso is truly a border town. We never seem to “rest” that much on our off days but I know this will be the last time I get to experience anything remotely like this so I figure I can just get caught up with sleep when I finish residency in 3 years. El Paso wasn’t my favorite city of the trip but it was a great break before the next push across the country. No Chain!