2nd July 2005
1. Breakfast in San Diego
2. Border crossing and tourist card
3. Tijuana
4. Trip to Ensenada
5. Ensenada
6. A very dull night out
1. Breakfast
I slept heavily from about 11PM to 10AM, waking only because someone in my dorm was hassling one of their friends to get up in time to catch the free breakfast. I fought my way through a thick haze of jetlag to stand gaping in the kitchen while people made themselves waffles from a pre-mix and drank really horrible coffee. I tried to make myself some waffles and a german guy who worked there told me off for not using non-stick spray on the waffle maker and poured the contents of the waffle maker, my breakfast, down the sink. Hmm. So I checked out of the hostel and went to a café a couple of doors down. Here I sat between an old African guy who looked like a construction worker and an even older white guy who looked like a farmer. I had French toast and black tea for US$3. Nice. I like the café, which was just one long bar with stools. The owners were Chinese and there was a selection of US style and Chinese food. Cool cafes in San Diego. Lousy hostels.
2. Border crossing
After breakfast I walked to a trolley stop and too the trolley to Tijuana and crossed the border. The border was very busy but no-one checked my passport or anything. I just read in the lonely planet that I need a ‘tourist card’ and can get one from a travel agent or airline. OK
3. Tijuana
Tijuana (TJ) was pretty interesting but not somewhere that I’d like to stay for any length of time. I took a photo of the road coming into TJ and of Tijuana River, both formidably concrete. The most common businesses in TJ are pharmaceuticals and sleaze. It looks like it could get pretty rough at night. I walked Avenida Revoluccion with a zillion other tourists, walked back up near the border and got the bus to Ensenada.
As I walked in TJ a stocky little guy started to walk with me and asked me, in good English, all sorts of questions including ‘how do you stay in touch with people back home?’. He advised me to get a taxi rather than a bus to Ensenada. He told me I could follow him out of the town centre to a bust stop downtown. He told me Zona Rio was miles away and I would need to get a taxi (on a map it was only a block away). He told me that, in his taxi, Ensenada was only 20 minutes away. I walked into a bus station to ask about getting to Ensenada and he tried to take charge but I didn’t let him and instead asked all the questions myself, in Spanish. When I did that the wind went out of his sails a bit. I’m not sure how serious that encounter was. He lied to me quite a lot but what was his motivation? Just to get a taxi fare and a free lunch? Maybe much worse. The Lonely Planet strongly advises against getting into a taxi with guys like him.
Apart from that guy, I notice that people hassle other tourists much more than they hassle me. Perhaps I look poor.
4. Trip to Ensenada.
The trip from TJ to Ensenada took just under two hours and passed through some extremely memorable country. Every Western is set among these bald hills. I should have taken more photos but I think the only one I took was of a massive housing complex with row after row of identical residencies. I’ll write more about poverty and class later, when I know more.
5. Ensenada
Ensenada is a pretty big town and has at least two sides to it. Close to the coast it is fully rich. A resort town for cruise ships full of rich tourists. Go back a couple of streets and you are in real Mexico. I walked the tourist strip, had a 25peso corona in a sports bar that would fit right in on 5th Avenue, San Diego, then walked a couple of blocks to have a 9 peso dinner from a street stall. All pretty cool in a way, but I’m off. I’ve booked a bus seat for La Paz and am leaving Ensenada at 2PM tomorrow. Its going to be quite a trip – 18 hours.
Accomodation in Ensenada is very expensive and I couldn’t find an exception. I’m staying in a boring but clean motel for US$50. Its OK. I have a nice shower and stuff. Prices are elevated because of the 4th of July long weekend in the US.
6. A very dull night out.
Why do I persist? I was having a reasonably OK night in, writing in this diary and watching TV, but no, at 10PM I decided I HAD to go out and have a beer in one of the gringo bars here. What a drop-kick I am. This place is a family and honeymoon kind of town and wandering alone past all the restaurants and cafes just made me feel lonely. So when I finally found a bar with music and a bit of a crowd I went in even though it wasn’t really my kind of space. So I stood alone at the bar and had a drink surrounded by mobs of yobs yelling incomprehensible Spanish at each other . A big screen showed a video of idiots shitting out the window of a moving car. I went home after one drink.
|  | 
|
