Our vacation in Los Angeles, California
Saturday, 13th May 2006
I woke up at 7am...Karen was already awake and playing Sudoku.
Trip to San Diego
We left the Orbit at about 0830, got some food at the Whole Food Market, and hit the road. Clearly road-building isn't a strength of Los Angeles - there are stax of potholes in the roads and where there aren't potholes the way the street has been patched up results in a bumpy ride. We took the 405 driving south of LA. As we headed out there was a bit of excitement - the car in the lane to the left of us was going at quite a lick, a vehicle pulled in front of it and the two collided - luckily they didn't move out of their lanes and we continued on our journey.
Tijuana
Karen and I decided to be daring and cross the border to Mexico, even though we didn't have a Mexican visa in our passports! We parked our rental vehicle on the USA side of the border - there are loads of parking lots, and walked across the border into Tijuana without any hassle whatsoever. It is much easier to walk across the border than drive across. If you drive across you have to get Mexican car insurance, you have to find a place to park your car in Tijuana (and risk leaving it there instead of in a protected parking lot on the USA side of the border) and then get into the very long queue to get your car across the border.
One of the first things we saw when we crossed the border was a pharmacy!
Avenue Revolucion
The main walkway through Tijuana is called "Avenue Revolucion". Click here to see our photo archive of Avenue Revolucion. A highlight for me was having lunch at a real Mexican restaurant. I had green peppers stuffed with cheese et al.
A real Mexican restaurant
Tijuana photos
Of course AvenueRevolucion was not the only place we took photos. Click here to see our archive of photos of Tijuana.
Haggling Mexican salesmen
As we walked the streets of Tijuana there was a constant stream of salesmen trying to sell their product to us. Some classic lines were:
-
"What! You just walking past...you not going to give me the opportunity to rip you off?"
-
"I'll sell you something you don't want .... cheap cheap"
Tijuana items on sale
The items on sale in Tijuana are the items which USA citizens want to buy. It's easy to think that this reflects Mexican culture, but I guess it's more true that it reflects what the USA citizens visiting Tijuana want to buy! Some items for sale were discount drugs, a plethora of T-shirts (a ubiquitous one had written on it "I'm shy....but I've got a big dick" !), loads of people trying to sell tequila, margeritas & beer; oversized straw hats, strip shows, restaurants & jewelry. I wasn't too happy to see the painted donkeys standing in the street and the bullrings didn't do it for me either.
Entrepreneurship
At the end of the bridge there was a signing pointing down the stairs to the left "To USA" which instead of leading you to the USA led you straight into somebody's restaurant!
Apartheid North America
"Apartheid" is an Afrikaans word meaning "Seperateness". As we left Mexico we entered extraordinary long queues to get across.
Queues of traffic and people to cross the border at Tijuana
We saw the traffic jams on the Mexican side of the border.
Traffic-jam on the Mexican side of the border with the USA at Tijuana
The Mexicans don't police and allow you to come and go freely. The USA polices their side of the border fiercely, and are the cause of the long delays. Across the entire Mexican border, the USA pours massive resources into preventing the Mexicans from seeking jobs in the USA; and is busy stepping up its efforts. In addition to official US efforts, US vigilantes also try to keep Mexicans out of the USA. In 2005 198 people died trying to cross the Mexican border to the USA, many never being identified and dieing anonymously.
America's Iron Curtain to prevent Mexicans from entering the USA
As we stood in the queue we saw a bunch of youngsters with their arms cuffed behind their backs being marched back to Mexico. Those with the right papers can cross the border, those without cannot...welcome to Apartheid North America.
And America before all this immigration...well the Indians like to refer to it as "the good ol days".
Immigration
Karen and I were singled out for special treatment at the Tijuana border. We didn't get waved through like everybody else as we are South Africa, we were sent on for more questions and computer checks.
Exiting the border checks at Tijuana
After getting back to Los Angeles, we stopped off at the Cyber Doc internet cafe on Melrose Avenue and booked our tickets for JetBlue (I'm quite glad that we're not flying SouthWest for this leg to Vegas).