Day 2: Tijuana, The Land That Time Forgot

No kidding, Tijuana looks like a city that someone built and then forgot about it.

Our day began with a trolley ride to the border. Each trolley stop closer to the border, the surrounding area looked more and more run down. Not to mention, there was progressively less grass and more and more gravel yards. When we stepped off the trolley in San Ysidro it already felt like I was in another world. Most of the signs were in both English and Spanish, I was one of the few people not of Latin American decent, and I’m pretty sure I was already surrounded by Chiclet dealers.

Just after we walked through the clunky, metal turnstiles we were greeted by a fleet of aggressive taxi drivers. All 37 of them asked us if they could give us a ride, and we politely declined about 4 times. After that we just stopped talking and put our heads down to avoid eye contact. Then we began walking passed the 973 booths selling the same products. An array of wrestling masks and capes (featuring the very scary Dora the Explorer and Hello Kitty), ceramic Disney Princesses and Dora’s, Dora beach balls (Dora is the official mascot of Mexico, by the way), cheap jewelry and purses. I’m not kidding, everyone is selling the same things. There are women with little babies who stand there for 12+ hours a day selling the same stuff as the person next to her.

There’s also no lack of Chiclets being peddled on the streets. I’m not sure how much it costs to buy a pack of Chiclets, but it can’t be that expensive because wads of chewed up gum are all over the streets. Singapore would just die. You have to constantly watch your step or you’ll be the person saying, “crap! I hate gum!!”.

My husband chose to wear a t-shirt he bought in Alaska a couple of years ago, so all day long people yelled at us, “HEY ALASKA! The final frontier!” or “HEY! ALASKAN HONEYMOONERS!!”. I couldn’t help but laugh, it’s utterly ridiculous. Besides, no one wears a t-shirt boasting their own state/town, we only wish to boast about the places we’ve been, duh. At one point someone actually yelled, “Hey! Alaskan honeymooners over here!” and I started laughing and he yells, “ok, I guess honeymoon is over!” The honeymoon ended when some guy offered me “silver bling” that looked as if it had been stolen off of a 50 Cent impersonator earlier in the day.

There were a few booths that sold what I think was yams, my husband believe it was some sort of meat. I believe that I am right because, A) I’m never wrong and B) yams and meat don’t exactly look alike, and he doesn’t know what a yam is so he can’t argue with me about it. Anyways, these meaty yams were covered with bees. It was so creepy, when I first saw it I actually stopped and turned into a 4 year old because I didn’t want to walk passed the bees. I am really afraid of being stung in the eye, just by the way.

After about 3 hours, we decided to leave Tijuana and return to our hotel and plan something else for the remainder of the day. At 1:26 we got in line to return to the United States. This line was about 2 miles from the border around AND under a bridge. Then there were people heckling you saying things like, “good luck finding the end!” or “I’m sure the end is back there somewhere!”. Thanks jerks, you’ve been very helpful. They stop peddling Chiclets to the people waiting in line and peddle more favorable goods such as Popsicles and bottled water. I guess they figured a pack of gum that loses flavor in 15 seconds isn’t a wise choice considering they barely have enough time to get out of my spitting distance before the gum loses flavor. At about 3:00, we were finally getting closer to the border and were close enough for Aaron to walk to a store and buy us some much needed beverages. At about 3:30 we could see the building where the border was, and we could also see border patrol getting very serious about people who cut in line. By the way, I don’t recommend it, they don’t take that offense lightly. It was about 4:15 before we were finally back in the country and we could only sit on the trolley and laugh about how we spent more time in line then we actually spent walking around.

Oh and by the way, if you’re ever in Latin America and you get the chance, I recommend trying Manzana Rojo. It’s an interesting red apple flavored soda (pop, coke, whatever you call it) made by Coca-Cola.