A Mexican guy I work with told me about this place. He is from a very small border town called Sasabe and he said that Caborca is famous for its Zona. He said he was there about 10-15 years ago and had a good time.

This town is located in northern Sonora on Mexico Highway 2. It is between Puerto Penasco and Santa Ana. I'm not sure how big it is, but it much smaller than my favorite Sonora destination, Hermosillo.

Because of the town's small size, I had serious doubts about mongering opportunities there and my doubts were confirmed. However, my curiosity got the better of me and I just had to check it out first hand. What I was most curious about was the "Zona Tolerencia". A lot of towns in Sonora do not have these zones of legal prostitution. They do not exist in Hermosillo, I know because I have asked around. Besides, I have almost as much wanderlust as I have pussylust!

The first thing I want to warn everyone about is Mexican Highway 2. Although I have now driven all the way from the border to Guadalajara, this was my first experience on this major east-west artery -- and it may be my last!

Considering this highway is the only one directly connecting the very large border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, it is in very poor condition. The surface is full of patched potholes. They were reconstructing large stretches on my visit which required long detours on dirt shoulders. Apparently, these road improvements are long overdue. I expected the drive from Tucson to take about three hours but because of the poor road it took four.

The town has a No Tell Motel as you approach from the east. It has the look of a castle and is called Motel Toxa. They do not have any rooms with Jacuzzis but the rooms are very clean and, like all Mexican motels of this type, they have a satellite dish that provides porno. I paid $450 pesos for the night.

Since she didn't speak English, I used my best broken Spanish and asked the old woman who took my money if there was a Zona Tolerencia in Caborca. She told me there was, but it was very dangerous. She said that she could provide me with a chica there at the motel. I thanked her and said I would call her later if I decided I wanted one.

After I cleaned up in the room I decided to drive into town to check it out and get a bite to eat. I found a great restaurant next to the Motel Camino very near highway. If you are ever in Caborca I can recommend it for great food at a great price. I had a huge Chile Relleno dinner that tasted homemade. It included refried beans, rice and fresh made tortillas. With coffee and tax my bill came to only $53 pesos. The dinner turned out to be the best part of my visit to Caborca!

After dinner, I drove around the small town to look for any likely TD clubs but found none. I spotted a taxi and stopped to ask the driver about panocha. He said he would take me to the Zona. On the way, he pointed out a couple of regular clubs that he recommended I check out later for chicas. These clubs looked deserted and he said it was too early (it was 8PM at the time) and said I should come back later around 11PM.

To get to the Zona Tolerencia you have to take a dirt side road off of the main highway. This side road would be impossible to find unless you had been there before. Taking the taxi was the only way I could have found it.

When we arived in the Zona after a short 1/4 mile drive on this road, it too looked deserted.
There were about a half-dozen clubs on either side of the dirt road. Because of the dirt road and the broken down looking buildings, the area had a very rough look to it. It reminded me of a Hollywood movie set from movies like Dusk to Dawn or The Mexican. Because of very few cars and people, it gave me an eerie feeling but I sensed none of the danger that I had been warned about.

The taxi driver and I checked out two of the clubs. One of the clubs was totally deserted and had zero chicas. At the other one, the driver talked briefly to an old woman that was bartending and she said that there were only two women available at the present time. She called for these women and after a few minutes they appeared. I won't try to describe these women, except to say that I didn't find them attractive. I thanked them but said I wanted to come back later at around eleven, as the driver suggested.

The driver then took me back to my truck. I told him I was going to go back to my hotel and take a nap until eleven. He told me his name and to call him later if I needed him.

At couple hours later, I drove my truck back to one of the clubs the cabbie said I should check out. This club is called "Las Brasas". I decided to go in when I saw a very attractive young chica in a short skirt standing outside the place. As soon as she saw me walking towards the door she quickly dashed inside. She did not approach me or say anything to me.

Inside I found a few men sitting at the bar watching Mexican variety show on TV and drinking beer. There was a dance floor but it there was no band and it was deserted. Two young and attractive chicas were sitting on one end of the bar. One of these girls was the one I saw outside the front of the club as I arrived. I ordered a beer and sat down a few stools away from them.

I stared at the TV and slowly drank my beer. Eventually, I got up the nerve to go try out my Spanish with the young chica at the end of the bar. Since she was sitting alone, I asked her if she wanted to sit with me. She said "No".

At this point, I need to explain that I have experience in only three types of bars in Mexico. The first is the Zona Tolerencia type of whorehouses like the ones mentioned above. The second is TD type places that they have in most of the cities in Mexico where you can fuck the women in privados. The third type is the traditional macho type of cantinas where I have never seen any women -- and I was told that respectable women do not enter. I have never before entered a regular dance club like Las Brasas.

I finished my beer and decided to drive back over to the Zona. When I arrived (it was now a little after 11PM) there were a few cars in front of most of the clubs. The first club I stopped at was very slow. There was a traditional runway for a stripper in the middle, but no dancer. A plain looking woman was sitting with one guy at at table and there were about half a dozen guys sitting at little tables around the runway. Some guy came up to me and said that a dancer would be coming out shortly. I asked him how many chicas there were and he said there were only two at present.

I then walked across the street to another club. This club had no runway but had a regular dance floor in the middle with a jukebox on one end. There was an old woman bartending. I asked her for a beer and sat down at one of the tables. I saw two women sitting in a corner and neither one were dressed like hookers but were wearing jeans and T-shirts. One of the two was fairly attractive with nice big tits, so I asked her if she wanted to sit with me and she agreed.

Her name was Dulce and she was from Hermosillo. We proceeded to make small talk -- as best I could in my limited Spanish. For the next hour she pumped me for drinks and cigarettes. These beers were the very expensive small little bottles. My beer was $15 pesos and hers was, of course, $25 pesos.

After about three beers I asked her if she wanted to go to my hotel. She gave me a funny look and then said she could come to my hotel later after the bar closed. Neither of us mentioned money. I told her where I was staying and my room number. She said she was familiar with the Motel Toxa and she would come over later. I told her I would wait for her at my hotel. She was a no-show.

I drove back to Tucson at 6AM the next morning. I took no photos on this trip as there was nothing worth photographing.
Besides the great Chile Relleno dinner, the best thing I can say about Caborca is that it made me appreciate Hermosillo all the more!

I was in Caborca approximately 15 yeats ago for several days. The company I worked for back then had a manufacturing facility that made computer keyboards that eventually were sold to Compaq (long ago this operation shut down).

Caborca back then was notoriously known as a small town that the drug cartel was thoroughly entrenched in. We were auditing a physical inventory count and one of the guys was adventurous, drove around, made a wrong turn, and wound up pulling into a driveway of a druglord's villa. When he saw the machine guns pointed at him, he made a "me, dumb gringo" gesture and got the hell out of there. They all laughed.

That might explain why your first chica was reluctant to chat with you.

My thought was ... "a guy could get killed here and the perpetrator never brought to justice".

I can't imagine things having changed over the years.

Yeah, I stayed at a motor lodge in Caborca with great porno flicks on the TV, meals = good, but pursuing the chicas might be a bit more adventurous than a cautious monger would bargain for, given the drug cartel's presence in this town.

Glad you made it back safely!

Thanks for your comment and concern. Yes, I was well aware of the reputation this place has. I did some reading about it on the Internet. Supposedly it was/is the home of the Caro-Quintero organization.

I try to put information like this in perspective. For instance, what makes Caborca any more dangerous for a traveling American than other Mexican cities that I have visited such as Nogales, Hermosillo, Culiacan, Mazatlan or Guadalajara. Those aforemention places are also the homes of drug bosses.

Secondly, I am also well aware of a large amount of drug activity in my hometown of Tucson. Recently, a large amount of marijuana was found in a home accross the street from my home. No arrests have been made, as far as I know.

Lastly, I am always careful not to pull into strange driveways or cross obviously private property. Maybe I am naive or stupid, but if anyone ever asks me why I am down there, I plan to tell them the truth and tell them I am there for the pussy. I have no intention of asking anyone about drugs, as that is not my addiction.

By the way, you never mentioned mongering when you were in Caborca. Do you remember the Zona?

I never mentioned "mongering" in part because ... ahem, ... the internet in 1989 was, if it existed at all, was not available to anyone except a few computer nerds.
I doubt it a chat board like this was available back then even if I was sufficiently computer literate with the prevailing primitive computer technology.
I didn't get into far away destination mongering until the late 1990's.
Being part of a corporate group was not conducive to mongering given the co-workers were married and rather a devoted lot. Oh well!
I did have my own rental car (Dollar Rent-A-Car back then was quite willing to allow their cars to be driven into Mexico from Tucson) but confess that my eyes were not fully opened to those mongering possibilities back then.
Sonora Mexico climate-wise was quite beautiful in November. Overall it was a nice memory.