The Border Crossing Nightmare

Sunday April 3. We spent a leisurely morning taking advantage of hotel amenities then checked out mid-morning to explore Ensenada. We wandered the waterfront and the fish market where we bought

The Ensenada fish market

smoked marlin. We strolled the street with tourist shops looking for dresses, but didn’t find anything. We departed for the border just at noon, as planned, expecting the trip to take about six hours. The drive to Tijuana along the coastal cliffs was spectacular and easy. We arrived about 1:30. And the nightmare began.

Between confusing signage, construction detours and traffic congestion, navigation was difficult and we ended up wandering around Tijuana city streets. We tried using maps.me, but the two lanes of the street that looked like it might lead back to the highway were barricaded and the traffic cop didn’t allow us to merge in to the right lanes. I opened the window to ask directions and he suggested the Second Street entrance. The street signs and maps.me showed named streets. We eventually realized that in small print the street signs also showed street numbers, spelled out. We stumbled around one way streets, more barricaded streets and traffic jams, a long way around. Eventually we realized that everybody was trying to go to the same place: the border. Almost all the cars had California plates; even the Latino families. Most of them were returning from spring break. And traffic was barely moving. 

It took us seven hours to go little more than three miles. We were entertained the whole way by an endless parade of street vendors, entertainers and panhandlers walking up and down between the lines of cars. There were fruits, ices, beverages, suckers, chips, hotdogs, smoothies, roasted corn and crepes. There were plastic dolls, rosaries, string bracelets, kids’ chairs, flags, whirly gigs that glow at night, sombreros, blankets, jewelry, flip flops, large crucifixes, live puppies, a parrot, windshield wipers, deodorizers, cell phone cords, ventilated car seat liners, and large plastic turtles. There were paraplegics in wheel chairs and haggard mothers with babies. But our favorites were the kids who juggled while standing on the shoulders of their older sibling. Some of the kids were quite small, and others were quite good. Equal opportunity: girls were as numerous as boys.  

We had of course long since realized that we weren’t going to make it to LA for dinner with Jodi and advised her so. And when we finally approached the line of twenty US customs booths, we realized another problem: Mexican immigration and customs were nowhere in sight. The US border agent--who looked at our passports for less than a minute and waved us through--said Mexican immigration was three miles away and customs was closed on Sunday anyway. We hadn’t legally exited Mexico and wouldn’t get our hefty deposit back for the car. We resolved to go back in the morning to take care of the paperwork at Tecate, a smaller, easier to navigate crossing. We drove into the San Diego suburbs and slept in a YMCA parking lot.

Monday April 4. Mike slept late while Sharman went in to the Y for a workout and a shower. We had a slow leak in our tire we needed to fix before we went any further, so our first stop was a tire shop. They said the gash was too big, the tire was non-repairable, and the spare was too old, they wouldn’t put it on the car. We had no cash, so our second stop was a gas station with an ATM.  A friendly guy gave us a card for a small tire business in Tecate. Then we headed 35 miles to the border. The road winding up through the desert hills was pleasant, and the towns on both the US and Mexican sides looked plesant too. 

Marcos, the tire guy in Tecate, changed our tire for the spare. Actually, tires are his secondary business; his primary business is parking for people who commute across the border on foot. We parked our car there and walked to the border. Our hopes that we could just walk across with our paperwork and walk back were dashed by the lady at the Banjercito Bank who had to authorize the refund. We checked with the head of the migration office and he said we could do it without bringing the car, but when we reported this back to the lady she said he didn’t know what he was talking about. She had to take pictures and register the vehicle with some sort of digital device to verify that it was the same vehicle that we had entered with. So we walked 20 feet back to the US to fetch our car, but were turned back by the US border patrol who said we had to walk all the way into Mexico and back around through US customs and immigration. Argh! There was no line at customs, but the control guy scolded us for not stopping at the stop sign before the booth and waiting to be waved forward. So we got across, fetched the car, asked Marcos to hold our fruits and alcohol so we

The fence at the border

wouldn’t have to deal with them at US customs, and drove across the border. After the usual confusion about where we needed to park and how to get there—we ended up backing part way down a one-way street—we got to the designated parking area, the bank lady showed up, cleared our vehicle and said the deposit would be credited back to Mike’s account the next day. Now we just had to re-enter the US. 

Just. There was no direct way to get the car into the chute for US customs. We asked directions and were told to go into town to the second stoplight and turn left. Which we did. Then we

Border guard at work

prospected every cross street looking for one that went through to the lane for US customs. We hit three dead-ends or closed routes before we found one more than a mile east that went through, and then we had to go even further east and turn around to reach the back of the line. Yes, there was a long line of cars waiting to cross the border. It took an hour and a half to reach the booth. Our entertainment this time was examining the dilapidated fence along the border and watching the border patrol guys on the hilltop, with their big white Ford SUVs, watching through binoculars. Once we reached the booth reentry was quick and easy. But from Tijuana to Tecate, our total time to cross the border was 24 hours. 

We went to pick up our fruit and alcohol from Marcos, but he wasn’t there. The booth was locked up. We tried to call the number on his card but the call failed. We tried to call the number on the wall but the call failed. We found a key on the ground and tried it, but it didn’t fit the door lock. We chatted up a guy who pays for parking by the month and he called both numbers and both calls failed. He tried to call another guy who might know how to reach Marcos, but that didn’t work. Another regular came to park his car and he tried and failed. We drove up the road a-ways to see if better reception might help, but it didn’t. We resolved to just wait for half an hour more to see if Marcos would return, and if not, shed a few tears and drive north without our precious cargo: our liter of premier tequila, three bottles of Mexican red wine and four bottles of Mexican microbrew. Maybe he was at lunch. Maybe he had to leave on business. Half an hour stretched into forty-five minutes. Hooray! Marcos came back! He had had to pay his overdue rent. We headed north towards LA.

We stopped at the AT&T store to get our phones turned back on, and learned that a new feature of our phone plan includes unlimited calling in Mexico and Canada at no additional charge. Sigh. We wish the guys in Arizona had told us that three months ago. Sharman wanted to get the car washed across the street to take off the thick layer of dust that coated it. Mike didn’t want to wash it until Seattle. We had a big fight about who gets to make such decisions and how to resolve differences of opinion. Rather than exit by airplane, Sharman took the car to the car wash without Mike. When she returned he was still smarting and didn’t feel like driving, so he rode in the back and Sharman drove to LA. Yes, Sharman is driving again. No potholes!

I drove straight to the beach in Santa Monica, hoping we might find some beer and ceviche. I knew my way around just a little bit from my visit five years ago. But we ended up in a Japanese restaurant that had some very exotic sushi, and drank hot sake. We drove up to the Brentwood neighborhood looking for a quiet place to park, and found a quiet, public lot on the edge of the hill where we parked for just $4.