Driving was destined to be difficult because I did not download the Garmin GPS maps for Mexico. A decision to take one of the many inexpensive taxis seemed sensible, so we negotiated a fair price and set off for the morning.
A delightful few hours were spent exploring beachside Baja Mexico, with the ever present spectre of the massive wall dividing Mexico from the US never far away. This structure is as big and as blunt as the Berlin Wall ever was, and is a stark reminder of the differences in wealth between the two nations.
When we returned to Tijuana in the early afternoon, things crashed down around us pretty quickly. We had deliberately run down our cash, knowing that pesos were useless to us as soon as we returned back over the border.
In order to pay the taxi driver his fee we needed to withdraw a small sum from a cash machine (called bancomats in Mexico). This was an operation that we had performed successfully the previous night, so we knew the location of a working atm, and the process required.
Sadly, the atm machine steadfastly refused to acknowledge my card - and my spare card - and Jo's card. With mounting concern, we assumed that the banks may have stopped our cards due to the prevalence of fraud in Mexico.
We tried a variety of other ATMs and cash facilities to no avail, with our very patient taxi driver (on a fixed fare agreement) carting us from one location to the next.
With no luck at any cash facility, we tried to call the banks to have the cards unlocked only to be stymied by US SIM cards that would not work in Mexico for international calls. And of course, we had no money to purchase local SIM cards to rectify this.
No worries, we thought, having a stash of circa $1,000 in Australian dollars tucked away. It transpires that AUD are not all that common in Mexico. In fact, so much so that three banks and four money changers would not exchange them for pesos.
Ahh, Western Union, I thought. I have an account with them from many years ago, so I will just send money to myself and pick it up locally. We located a Western Union office on Avenido Constitucion, and off I trotted to make the necessary arrangement. Alas, this WU office is only a receiving/dispensing station and I would need to return to Australia to make a transfer (thanks for that bloody useless advice) or make a transfer online and then pick it up locally.
After travelling back and forth to the hotel, I used their excruciatingly slow internet connection to try to log in to Western Union office. Sadly the connection was so slow that the online login form timed out three times, subsequently locking my account pending a telephone call - which we could not make. Grrrr.
Time in Perth was early hours of the morning, so not able to alert anyone with these troubles cause they would all be asleep instead of watching their email accounts.
What to do? what to do? what to do?
At this point, the taxi driver gave up and we agreed that he would take $50 Australian from us (a tidy sum) in the hope that he might someday be able to trade it with another Aussie for pesos.
There was nothing for it except to drive straight to the border and cross back into the US where our phones would work and we could call our respective banks.
We walked back to the parking lot to discover that the lovely parking attendant (Martin) had washed our car while we were away that morning. There was no request for payment, he had been doing his own car and simply noticed that ours was very dirty. We felt terrible not even being able to tip him modestly.
We set out to drive the short distance back to the US border when a couple of rather relevant issues occurred to us.
The first was whether we were actually allowed to take the hire car out of the US at all. As it turns out, the answer is 'no'.
The second was whether we would be allowed back into the US at all, given that we had been granted a single entry US visa via the ESTA system on arrival at Los Angeles Airport.
We drove up to the immigration checkpoint with a very real sense of trepidation, expecting it to all go quickly to crap.
The northbound border between Mexico and the US is quite literally the busiest in the world, with more than forty lanes of vehicular traffic being processed simultaneously. The officers wear bullet proof vests, are well armed, and routinely encounter all manner of bizarre situations. In short, they are very observant and thorough.
After a half hour wait in the queue, we moved into position behind the front vehicle and watched as it was inspected from top to bottom. Doors were pummelled, mirrors moved underneath, engine compartment examined, and all manner of other testing. Eventually, the officer found nothing, but decided that it still didn't pass his standards and the driver and vehicle were led away for further processing.
When we moved up into the processing bay, I tried for a casual and friendly approach by noting that it we a tough job when there were so many vehicles waiting. He looked at me as if I was insane and commented that this was the lightest day that he could ever remember, with processing queues regularly taking eight hours to move to the front of the line. Simple maths: 40 odd lanes, perhaps 50 cars per lane, that's 2000 vehicles trying to get across this border at any point in time - and real vigilance required because a portion of them are trying to move people, drugs and munitions into the US.
Despite all of this, the officer was actually quite friendly and we were waved through after a check of passports and some perfunctory questioning. We hit the smooth interstate on the other side with air punchs all round, headed for San Diego and a well earned rest.
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