You goin' where?

Whenever we told anyone we planned on heading to Mexico, the first thing out of their mouth was, "What about all the kidnappings and slayings?" How many times do you get that reaction before you start to wonder, yeah, what about those kidnappings and slayings? Oh right I would remind myself, those are all in the border towns and we are gonna be through Tijuana before someone can say "kidnap those americans". Whew.


Until we actually go through Tijuana. The border is messy. Mexican officials standing around in uniform barking spanish while young soldiers weilding old school rifles grimly stare at you. Intimidating to say the least. As they look through our camper, we try to ask where the local immigration office is located. We need to find it since we are heading into southern Baja for longer than 24 hours requiring a tourist visa card, turisma de touriste. The officer in charge gruffly shouts spanish words we don't understand and points behind the big border wall. Great, we don't know where we are going in this bloody town.

The road diverts around and throws us into a circle filled with massive beat up vehicles honking, smoking, and shoving their way into the traffic. Somehow we have to make it from this side of the four deep vehicles to the other road. No one here is going to let us through. Conveniently a pushy local forces his way through the crowd right beside us so we ride the wave so to speak and scoot through to the other side. I sigh relief.

We still don't know where we are going but somehow pull up beside an official looking building. Parking, we wander around what seems like an armory and go through a various set of hallways leading to an open air courtyard. We wander into a small room where a sharply dressed older gentleman asks us in spanish what we wanted. At least that is what I think he asked.
We push our passports across the desk and he gets the picture.

Turisma de touriste in hand we jump back in the truck only to see we broke our first Mexican law and we haven't even been here twenty minutes. Parking ticket. I swear it is Justin's fault, if only because he is bad luck for traffic and parking tickets. This would be his third this year.

Tijuana Ticket.

Our drive out of Tijuana was less eventful than the drive in although I could not help noticing the monstrosity of a wall recently built to keep immigration under control.

The Great Wall of Mexico

The Northern Coastline of Mexico

As we hit the northern coastline and I see the Pacific Ocean, I am immediately at ease. We made it! With border towns, kidnappings, and slayings behind us and with 1000 miles, three days, and deserts ahead of us until our final destination in Los Barilles, I turn to Justin and smile. Bienvenidos de Mexico!