Big Trouble in Little Tijuana

Hot hot heat. Taxi engines buzzing and horns blaring. Kids selling packs of gum to tourists, a bored Mariachi band knocking out a Mexicana version of Hotel California for the 100th time of the day while a donkey, painted as a zebra, looks on. Welcome to Tijuana.

Everybody needs good neighbours

"Let's go to Mexico tomorrow" said Bobby while preparing yet another Rice-a-Roni meal in the hostel's squalid kitchen. According to the Lonely Planet, you can reach Tijuana by taking the San Diego Trolley (the local metro) to the end of the line. Then, after exchanging pleasantries with the always-cheerful American border staff, you literally walk into Mexico.

So one fine morning, we, along with a friendly Kiwi bloke (I can't even remember the poor bastard's name) from our dorm, headed south for a day of sightseeing and pointless drinking. Adios Amigos! Things went surprisingly smoothly and, before we knew it, we were over the border and nervously traipsing through a strange, almost abandoned shopping mall - think Resident Evil - before emerging into the chaos of Avenida Revolución.

Sombrero stores, poncho stores, tequila stores and garish bars. Kids/street urchins aggressively flogging chewing gum. Taxi horns being used like machine guns. Touts of all shapes, sizes and sexes physically pulling us into their establishments. And the donkeys were indeed painted to resemble zebras.

There isn't too much to see in TJ in terms of sights (well, from our limited wallet and narrowminded viewpoint anyway). So we ticked off the cultural box by wandering up and down the main drag nervously before entering the least intimidating cantina we'd seen.

Downtown TJ - it looks just like this

Simple wood furnishings. Photos of Mexican banditos and moustache-clad footballers on the wall. Creedence Clearwater Revival's Down on the Corner booming over the stereo. And locals eyeing us with suspicion. What more could you want? We ordered an exotic local dish: Tres chicken fajitas por favor. But hold on to your sombreros folks... this was no supermarket El Paso kit. Think Uranium shavings. It only took an hour for my tears to dry and my tongue to reform. Arriba arriba!

After purchasing a poncho from a souvenir shop – this actually happened - we were dragged into a bar, ordered a bucket of cervezas and, in time honoured fashion, got ripped off.

Alcohol. Time. Who knows where it goes? Daylight fading.

Tres cerveza por favor (please note AI-created false brands)

There's only so much culture you can absorb so it was time to get back to the USA. But as we tumbled from the bar, the question was… which way was the border? In our slightly disorientated, alcohol-fuelled state, we weren’t sure. Why didn’t you just check google maps I hear you ask? Because it didn't exist back then, hombre. Phones still had green screens and were used to play snake.

Estimating our potential location on the tiny half-page Lonely Planet map, we headed in hopefully the right direction. By now it was dark and the colourful stores and enthusiastic locals had vanished. We found ourselves at the side of a major road, lost. As we debated the complexities of hailing a cab ‘to the border senor!’, a car screeched to halt beside us. Before we could say ‘cartel’, we were surrounded by five or six machine gun-toting, black-clad figures.

They were cops of some sort and forcibly lined up against a wall. Gangster films and TV shows flashed through my mind. Were we going to get shot? Beaten? Kidnapped?

Shouts and forceful directions. The lead cop searched our bags and while rifling through the Kiwi’s rucksack, triumphantly offered a Mexican equivalent of ‘ah ha’ and held up a fragment of dust. ‘Marijuana’, he exclaimed. Now, me and The Brain didn’t really know the Kiwi. But we hadn’t seen him smoke anything today and carrying drugs across the US border would seem like a high-risk strategy. Fear took hold. We all protested our innocence to no avail. Was this the point we were meant to offer a bribe? However, what if that was a total misread of the situation? Would we get arrested?

Aided by the cops lack of English and our pitiful Spanish, we reached what I’d like to call… a Mexican stand-off.

YeNow, it’s hard to say precisely what happened at this point. My best guess is our complete bafflement and bemused Englishness eventually forced the exasperated cops to simply... give up. And they simultaneously packed up and drove off.

Quickly gathering ourselves, scared now, sober now, we headed in the suspected direction of the border. Only for, and this is honestly true, a few minutes later, ANOTHER police van to screech in front of us and play out the whole, almost identical, charade again! Presumably, it was a popular racket for the cops shaking down disorientated yet more savvy tourists.

Still, so long TJ and thanks for the cheap, synthetic ponchos. Hasta la vista!