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Only a twenty minute drive from San Diego, the lure across the Mexican border to Tijuana seemed too big to resist, and the chance to get a Mexican stamp in our passports.
The day started badly, however, as we quickly found ourselves lost in the middle of Mexico, instead of being just across the border from San Diego. It seemed that we should have got off the bus whilst being still in the US, and then we could walk across the border to the Tijuana tourist strip and enjoy muchos Margheritas and Burritos, as planned.
What we actually did was far from that: we foolishly assumed that getting the bus to Tijuana Central Station would be the way to go, then we'd be in the middle of the action; we were sadly mistaken. The bus station turned out to be about 50 miles from the tourist strip, so we then had to wait two hours in the station before a bus back to the US border. The main problem in between all this was the fact that none of the Mexican Greyhound officials seemed to recognise the value of our Greyhound Discovery Pass (which gives us unlimited travel in the USA, Mexico and Canada for 60 days), but after a fair few conversations in Spanglish we eventually ironed out the kinks.
One of our pictures in the album shows the difference between the Mexican side of the border crossing and the American side. The essential difference between the two is that the Mexicans don't at all mind Americans coming across to their fine land, and are indeed often surprised when this happens. The Americans, on the other hand, have the strictest border control in the world and, it seems, they are even reluctant to let tourists back into their country, let alone Mexicans. It comes as no surprise, then, to hear that we had to wait another two hours in the queue to get back across the border to America, before we could then simply walk back across to the copious amounts of cheap Tacos and Tequila just inside the Mexican border.
Five hours after we set off, then, we eventually made it to the Tijuana strip, where we did enjoy all the Mexican food and drink we could scoff - at very cheap prices. I even got my picture taken with a Sombrero on, although we resisted all temptation to buy one with 100% off, as we weren't sure how this was possible. Something lost in the translation there.
Kev
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