Once Upon a Time in Mexico: Part I Getting There

Yesterday was an eventful day and I'll post pictures if Bill ever gets back from our friend Darby's house with his camera. (Bill is my friend from home who is visiting the area because he's considering a move out to the West coast and figured he might as well come out when he has a free place to stay.)

Bill and I started out the morning something like this.

Me: "So do you want to go to Mexico?"
Him: "Yeah, definitely if I can be home in time for surfing" (4:00 pm)
Me: "Ok, but I've been thinking that I want to park at the border and walk across so we don't have to get the car insurance stuff and wait in that long line."
Him: "Sounds fine."

So the upshot of the story is that we drove down to Rosarito and Puerto Nuevo. We didn't get out of the car in Rosarito because we were obsessed with finding PN, but Bill didn't want to look at a map until I was officially in panic mode. Yes folks, I was the one driving in Mexcio. I can barely drive here where the streets are clean, fancy and semi-labeled. For some reason, Mexico just hasn't chosen to spend what little money they have on the roads.

Let me describe a couple of the events that happened, which I realize may be funnier to us because we were there, but they really made us laugh.

When we first get to Puerto Nuevo there is a man with a red flag and a whistle adamantly directing us to the right and there is another man doing the same on the right. With tears of fear in my eyes I said "Well Bill, if I don't go to the right this man can actually strike the car, so I'm going with him." It was $3 to park and they gladly took our money. I had been forwarned about "Chickle? Chickle?" so I had some dimes in my pocket to give to the MASS OF CHILDREN that decended upon us. After shaking them with my silver treasures, we made our way through the town. Thank God that Bill knows some Spanish otherwise we'd be in trouble. People just sort of chased us down the street telling us to come into their shops and restaurants. My favorite part was that they all seemed to have a favorite American phrase. "What's it gonna hurt?" as in "What's it gonna hurt if you just stop in here and I push my cheap products on you while you attempt to haggle having no concept of the real value of this crap". Following our tradition of sticking with the plan (I wanted to eat at the lobster shack that the Mexican in the knit Corona hat had haggled us down to a $9 full meal and Bill had agreed) we naturally made our way up to the third floor of this shanty that had no Corona hatted men in it...only people that looked at us with crazy eyes and sheer excitement. (And yes, we got charged about $15 a person, but frankly I don't care. These people clearly need that money more than I do and I had a great meal while we were there.) Our free margarita and tequila shot (the best I've ever had) loosened me up enough that I relaxed my grip on both my wallet and my rectum. I had been so nervous about going there but people were pretty nice and I was actually learning all the Spanish I needed to buy the shitty merchandise I desired.

And did I ever desire some merchandise...