Cheap Holidays in Other People's Misery

From the latest New York Times Upfront magazine, this piece by Patrick O'Gilfoil Healy.

Clad in black clothes and moonlight, our guide Poncho adjusts his ski mask and faces us to speak. The desert has claimed many lives, he says, but tonight we will make it across the border.

The night is crisp and clear in the central Mexican highlands. Our group of 13 is about to set out on one of Mexico's more bizarre tourist attractions: a make-believe trip illegally crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States.

The four-hour caminata nocturna, or nighttime hike, traverses desert, hills, shrubs, and riverbeds in the Parque EcoAlberto, an eco-park about three hours northwest of Mexico City (and 700 miles from the U.S. border). Tourists on the mock border crossing, led by "fellow immigrants," have to run and hide from fake Border Patrol agents.