12-1-12, twenty days until the end.

Crossed into Mexico today at Tijuana, was extremely uneventful. The Mexican Border Guard wanted to see the Donkey's engine (to confirm it wasn't powered by enslaved mexicans, I assume) so I unpacked the cargo area and showed her. She was surprised that it was in the back, and a little confused until I showed her. We still have quite a bit of stuff living back there so it was a bit of a chore. After checking a few other areas for enslaved mexicans (our fridge and a footlocker in the back) she seemed satisfied and let us go. We happily motored out of the border area and were instantly deposited into TJ. It was so effortless, in fact, that we failed to get our tourist visas. Apparently we were standing right next to where we needed to get them, but couldn't figure it out due to our Norte Americanoism. I made that up. We're currently working on the assumption that playing dumb might keep us out of trouble until we can get the correct paperwork.

After crossing the border, the environment seemed drastically changed. There was alot of abandoned buildings, alot of new construction, and crazy drivers. The roadsigns were a little different than we were used to, because we couldn't understand any of them.
They also seem to place the signs after the exits, to let you know when you missed the turn you wanted to take. That was a little handy, kept us from getting too lost. Which only happed once so far, since we crossed the border.

Before entering Mexico we weren't sure about restrictions on bringing food and electronic items into the country. We had found several conflicting reports, and the official laws published seemed quite restrive. We had a marathon fruit eating session and cooked almost everything we could. We ate or disposed of/gave away everything except packaged shelf stable items and condiments. When we crossed the border they didn't seem concerned with any of the contents of our fridge or pantry since there was an obvious lack of enslaved and impoverished mexicans in them.

That meant we had to go shopping. we stopped in Rosarita at a grocery store called something like CaliMex. Wandering the aisles was a bit confusing, not being able to read virtually any of the labels. We really started to panic when we got to the liquor aisle and couldn't understand anything. Maybe I should amend that. Cara could easily identify different wines. I, on the other hand, was faced with a virtual pyramid of unfamiliar alcohol bottles. There were a few familiar bottles, but so many unfamiliar ones that I was a bit overwhelmed. Thankfully, there happened to be a tequila representative (salesperson) there and she assured us that the 2 for 1 special she had for 136.95 pesos was definitely the most delicious tequila ever produced and we should probably buy all that she had. Eddie bought one 2 for 1 pack, hopefully there will be more available at the next store. We couldn't find triple-sec or lime juice, so we decided to try some mystery juice boxes with pictures of oranges on them and some teeny tiny limes. I think it was about $1 for a pound, which worked out to about 15 limes. 8.9 pesos /kilo. Crazy cheap. The cashier babbled at me several different times, I didn't understand anything. I smiled and said either 'yes' or 'no' randomly, this seemed to satisfy her and she continued tallying up our bill.

We got to the first campspot and it didn't appear to be a campground anymore, so we moved on. A couple miles away we tried the second spot and it worked. After randomly saying 'yes' or 'no' and 'uno' or 'dos' I was able to get rid of 200 pesos and drive around the campground. The spots were large and very widely spaced out, the campground sprawled down the hillside to the beach and along the ridgeline for about a mile. Eddie and Kathryn picked out a spot close to the ocean with a tiny palm tree in the middle. I instinctively drove down onto the beach to try out the 4x in the Donkey. I goosed it while turning around trying to get stuck, but only made a bit of noise and dug a bit of a rut. Eddie signaled from our campsite above to pause for a photographic opportunity, so I sat there smiling like an estupido gringo long enough for the babbling mexican campground host to zoom over on his 4wheeler to babble some more at me. He waved his arms about a bit, and said 'blah blah babble babble bla arriba babble'. I said 'Yes, Up there?' He Said 'si' (which I understood) and 'blah blah babbly gobble babble' which I understood none of. We both drove off and I haven't seen him since so I guess we got our message across.

The girls whipped up some scrumptious food out of difficult to pronounce things and we had a yummy dinner. (as usual). Eddie and I experimented with various ingredients attempting to produce a margarita. It came out pretty good, but I'm sure we'll perfect our recipe soon. By the way, Cara says pretty Darn good! After watching the sunset We finished dinner and a bottle of tequila by about 6:30. I'm writing this in the back seat of the Donkey listening to the surf. No fire tonight, weather is pretty decent. I'd guess it's 60-ish right now. Got my hoodie on again but am very comfortable. I was quite warm today, I'll probably be back in shorts again tomorrow. Gonna be an early night.

Our Campsite

The Girls waiting for the sunset...

A big cactus.