Tijuana
Monday, December 13
Beck: Welcome to Tijuana, a wasteland city on the border of the U.S.,
in the shadow of swollen, sulfer-spewing factories. Anything
authentically Mexican had been self-parodied and marketed at American tourists.
All in all, a misleading and depressing introduction to the country.
Marc:
Once we were across and on the streets Beck and I were greeted with complete and utter
chaos the likes of which I had never before witnessed. There was a giant traffic
circle that had about 4 lanes of traffic circumnavigating, the outermost two
mostly consisting of taxis picking up the people standing on the side of the road.
It was already pretty late by the time we made it there, and it was Monday, so I
guess most of the livelier shops were closed for the nights. But there were
still plenty of pharmacies (farmacias) open, and a guy carrying a sack with an
exposed feline tail hanging out and repeated high-pitched ventriloquist protests
by aforementioned cat.
We were repeatedly harassed by taxi drivers standing among
the crowd, our gringo features labeling us as rich suckers. We made a brief start
to walk towards town, but were immediately dissuaded by a cabby looking for fares
insisting that it was quite impossible to walk from where we were. We later learned
this was absolutely false, but it seems that either the taxi drivers in Tijuana
are completely unaware of the ability to traverse distances by foot OR they're lying
assholes looking to scam some money from the unaware. I lean more towards the latter.
Beck: We stopped to watch where people went - most of the locals seemed to be
lining up for the next white-and-orange "Taxi Libre" - which wasn't literally the free taxi we
first thought (and hoped) it might be.
As we waited in line with the Mexicans, a quick look in our not-so-trusty guidebook, "Let's GO" on Mexico,
confirmed that the American-styel yellow cabs - with their shills shouting "Taxi, taxi!" on every
corner - preyed almost exclusively on tourists, and charged absurdly high rates. The
book informed us that the Taxi Libres were only slightly cheaper.
Marc:
When we finally got to the head of the queue, I asked the driver
in stumbling, ill-pronounced Spanish to take us to a hotel near the main bus station.
After a chaotic run through and about the city, we were deposited at the main bus
station. Well, close, right?
Beck:
Our plan was to get the hell out of Tijuana as quickly as possibly the next day,
so we were going to try to sleep at a hotel nearby.
But when the driver dropped us off at the main bus station - for 50 pesos, or about $5 -
we discovered that the station was far away from downtown, in a nest of freeways
and other non-pedestrian-friendly roads, with no businesses, hotels, or restaurants in sight.
We had been deposited at the Camionera
near the international airport - and apparently the Camionera is rarely anywhere near the
Centro, the downtown.
We thought we could buy our tickets for tomorrow at least, but as we walked up and down
the bewildering bus station, we realized we weren't even exactly sure where we wanted to go -
let alone how to choose a bus provider out of those available.
Unlike in the U.S., where there is only Greyhound for long-distance bus travel, Mexico
has a medley of different buslines, each with different regional specialties and
quality of services. Rates were posted on crowded whiteboards or on movie-style letterboards.
To us, though, standing in the long hallway looking at
all the different booths, we couldn't tell the differences and were not in the mood
to try.
Marc:
Rebeckah kept insisting that it was unsafe for us
to travel at night by bus as many references had warned against it because of a certain
possibility of a road-heist. I conceded, and we chose the much safer
"wander blindly around a seedy unlit section of Tijuana" option in search of a
hotel, which there were none of.
We regrouped, and decided to catch another cab,
this time a colectivo back into the area we had just departed, but this time
on the other side of the "impassable" river the cabby warned us of. The colectivos
are unofficial cabs, mostly 20 year old station wagons with extra seating in the
back. They are much cheaper, and run standard routes like buses, well, like buses in Mexico.
More on that later.
Beck: For 20 pesos, we were deposited on Avenida Revolución,
the quintessential Tijuana street, neon clubs pounding music out
into the street.
Marc: Wandering around, constantly solicited for another cab joy-ride... or to come
drink the tasty alcohol in many fine establishments... or watch and touch dancing naked
girls eventually found us in a pseudo-American overpriced restaurant.
Beck: It was a 24-hour restaurant called Ricardo's Tortas, and came with glowing recommendations
from "Let's Go" - our first warning that this particular guidebook would not be
suited to our particular lifestyle.
I had been too cheap to actually purchase any guidebooks this trip, so I had just checked out
three books on Mexico from the Bellingham Public Library: "Let's Go: Mexico" which
covered the entire country, "Lonely Planet: Mexico's Pacific Coast", which only
dealt with the thin strip running along the coast from Mazatlan to Cancun, and
Carl Franz's "The People's Guide to Mexico"
- the latter being the most engaging read, if
not the most useful.
"Let's Go" seemed geared towards a different type of tourist, listing mostly
expensive hotels and restaurants and giving extensive details about nightclubs while
neglecting information on simpler sights. It also assumed the traveler would be
getting around mainly by taxi, and so presented a different view of distances.
Marc: I got a
fish torta and we again reread the LG book for hints on where to go. The going rate
for lodgings
seemed about 220-240 pesos so we finally decided on a lovely little place by the
name of Hotel del Rey for $20 American. It was the scummiest place (and most expensive)
we stayed in all our time in Mexico, but we were exhausted and just wanted to go
to sleep off the streets.
Beck: Our room was small and dirty, and we lay on the bed fully clothed
to minimize contact with the scabies that undoubtedly were crawling all over the sheets.
There was one window in the room opening into the hotel's hallway, letting in a greenish
fluorescent glow. Despite the TV from the foyer blaring a Spanish cop show, we were almost
asleep - when all the sudden there was a swell of unbelievably loud mariachi music.
Apparently there was a bar with a jukebox on the other side of the wall. It was so
horrible it was almost funny. We still managed to get to sleep soon after that.
NEXT: We explore Tijuana and depart by bus
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