San Diego and Tijuana
Trip Start
Jul 17, 2008
1
20
24
Trip End
Aug 17, 2008
Tijuana,
Baja California,
Mexico
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
We arrived at the KOA around 3pm. After camping at state parks for the last couple of weeks the KOA is like heaven. They have lots of showers, a beautiful pool, a hot tub a store, Interent at our site and even a gourmet coffee bar in the morning! The campground is located in the city of Chula Vista which is about 10 minutes from downtown San Diego. We were in the pool by 6:30pm on Wednesday.
Thursday morning, we departed the campsite at 8:00 to make the trip to Tijuana, Mexico. Chula Vista is approximately 10 miles from the Mexican border. We took the city bus to the trolley station which took us to the border. Basically, you get off the trolley and you walk across the border. We crossed the walkway into Mexico and at the end of the walkway there were official looking men in yellow shirts.
Cow girl Erin
We assumed these were the officials that would ask us to see our passports. To our surprise, they were the taxi drivers. Our driver took us downtown for $5.00. So-no documents required to get in! Well Tijuana-How can we describe this experience only to say we went and we don't really need to return. It's a bit like a carnival with really high pressure sales people at every single store and street corner. The merchandise consists of lots of beaded jewelry, pottery, leather, baskets and knock off type shoes, purses etc. We did have a great lunch there and we all feel ok today! Erin decided that the mechanical bull ride would be a great thing to do. She lasted a couple of seconds and is a little sore today. Jennifer took her turn and lasted a little longer but not much. By 1pm, we saw all we needed and made our way back to the border. The process to leave takes a whole lot longer than when you arrive. There was a huge line-up at US customs to depart. They did have a lot of border staff checking documents. If we had driven it would have taken a couple of hours. The line-up coming into California was incredibly long. Apparently, Tijuana has the busiest border crossing in the US. After arriving back on US soil, we took the trolley (which is actually a train) to downtown San Diego. We got off at the harbor front area and took a walk around. We proceeded to take the bus to downtown center. San Diego is a really easy city to get around and unlike LA they have an excellent public transportation system. The downtown core is very nice-with many shops, restaurants and a blend of old age and new. It has been very hot here so the pool provided a great end to the day!
