Siji and I (st)rolled out of our swank digs in San Diego's Kensington neighborhood, where we'd stayed with an au pair (from the Couchsurfing website) and her German ex-boyfriend in an in-law cottage. It was spitting rain, and we had several errands to tackle before we caught the last run of the day (via several other buses and trolleys) from the El Cajon transit center to the Mexican border town of Tecate.
Tecate certainly trumped the only other Mexican border town I've ever had occasion to pass through: Tijuana, where mournful-looking horses painted to resemble zebras roamed the tourist zone of Avenida de Revolucion. Clearing customs was a non-issue: we strolled right by, with neither a check nor questions - a privilege obviously reserved for people coming from the US side, but a pleasant occasion nonetheless. We quickly spotted the hotel where Siji had stayed on her last journey through town, the Hotel Paraiso, whose name couldn't have been more ironic: "It looks like a prison," quipped Siji. Sure, but at 240 pesos ($20 USD) a night for a room sans TV, what of it? There was hot water which blasted out of the showerhead at full pressure (something I lack at home), filtered drinking water in the lobby, and clean bedding. Nevermind the mildewed ceiling - we weren't moving in, right?
We saw what we could of Tecate-by-night. Wild dogs roamed the streets, picking at plastic garbage bags with their teeth. Dentists were everywhere, their neons signs falsely advertising "ABIERTO" (or, just as often, "OPEN" - most of their patients are likely Americans) well after dark. A paleteria (why are they always affiliated with Michoacan and named thusly, anyway?) swore up and down that my guava popsicle was _agua_ rather than _leche_ based, and charged me accordingly, but a bathroom visit later that night told the conclusive truth: even my impassioned claims of a vicious milk allergy (a convenient way of characterizing veganism in places where the concept is just too out-there) had fallen on deaf ears.
We wandered the aisles of the Calimax grocery store, marveling at the low cost of oranges (the cute hipster-by-local-standards guy in the dated Palestinian scarf didn't escape my attention, either - I dubbed him the Tecate Hottie, which rhymes if you mangle it appropriately), and checked out the life-sized nativity scene in the town center. Every guidebook describes the plaza as the epicenter of Tecate nightlife, but rain has a way of changing the score. We weren't immune to the desire to be warm and dry, and eventually found ourselves at an internet cafe where a young girl, after periodically interacting with us (or, more accurately, the small plastic pig I had in my bag) for an hour, kissed Siji goodbye on her cheek before leaving. Her mother scolded her - not because she had kissed a stranger, but because she hadn't obliged me as well. "Besitos para mi?", I pouted, and she ran over and dutifully planted a peck on my right cheek. (At that, my biological clock ticked so forcefully that my chest threatened to burst open.)
We saw what we could of Tecate-by-night. Wild dogs roamed the streets, picking at plastic garbage bags with their teeth. Dentists were everywhere, their neons signs falsely advertising "ABIERTO" (or, just as often, "OPEN" - most of their patients are likely Americans) well after dark. A paleteria (why are they always affiliated with Michoacan and named thusly, anyway?) swore up and down that my guava popsicle was _agua_ rather than _leche_ based, and charged me accordingly, but a bathroom visit later that night told the conclusive truth: even my impassioned claims of a vicious milk allergy (a convenient way of characterizing veganism in places where the concept is just too out-there) had fallen on deaf ears.
We wandered the aisles of the Calimax grocery store, marveling at the low cost of oranges (the cute hipster-by-local-standards guy in the dated Palestinian scarf didn't escape my attention, either - I dubbed him the Tecate Hottie, which rhymes if you mangle it appropriately), and checked out the life-sized nativity scene in the town center. Every guidebook describes the plaza as the epicenter of Tecate nightlife, but rain has a way of changing the score. We weren't immune to the desire to be warm and dry, and eventually found ourselves at an internet cafe where a young girl, after periodically interacting with us (or, more accurately, the small plastic pig I had in my bag) for an hour, kissed Siji goodbye on her cheek before leaving. Her mother scolded her - not because she had kissed a stranger, but because she hadn't obliged me as well. "Besitos para mi?", I pouted, and she ran over and dutifully planted a peck on my right cheek. (At that, my biological clock ticked so forcefully that my chest threatened to burst open.)
The next morning, while Siji slept, I ventured out into the sheets of rain to see what else the town held in store. There was delicious fresh-squeezed juice at Jugo de Casita, roasted piñones at the "seed and cereal store", surprisingly tasty and healthy vegan date cookies, cheaply stylish "Panam" brand sneakers (in most any color combination you could want) at every shoe shop in town, and - of course - the Tecate beer factory, whose sign loomed over its namesake city. While I'm sure their beer garden might prove inviting on a finer day - even for a teetotaler like myself - it didn't exactly beckon that morning. I made an obligatory visit to the office to confirm that one did indeed need an appointment for a tour, and then - like a frog deftly navigating his way across a pond with sparsely-scattered lily pads - made my way back to the hotel, catapulting myself over two-foot-deep roadside puddles. We may have been less than a kilometer from the border, but when it came to municipal drainage the difference couldn't have been more extreme.
Clearly, it was time to reassess our plans for conquering the peninsula. I'd had some romantic notions about heading south along the Sea of Cortez, skipping Highway 1 in favor of a number of small dirt roads. It was a nice idea, but the monsoon-like conditions caused us to reconsider our options. Having checked the regional weather forecast the prior night, I hauled out my highway map, broke the news ("the only bus of the day heading to Ensenada leaves at 1:30 pm" - our hotel would kick us out at 1, conveniently), and stated my case: I was in favor of getting as far south as possible as quickly as we could. The bus certainly wasn't cheap, however. I expected that the prices quoted in my five-year-old guidebook would be a bit low, but they'd _doubled_, making last-minute Greyhound tickets seem like a comparative bargain. Knowing the minimum wage in Mexico, I was puzzled: how could locals possibly afford intercity bus travel? We weren't locals, though, and we knew that a pricey overland slog to sunnier parts was a rock-solid investment. Like Lyle Lovett, we too would take the Road to Ensenada.
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