Mexico

Today was our trip to Mexico, exciting!
It was an early start, although we were pretty lucky being picked up right from our Hotel Lobby. We met our driver for the day Carlos (who was Mexican) and started our 2.5 hour drive toward Mexico.

The tour bus ended up being filled with the Mexican driver, a Kiwi family of 8 and us two Aussies. It was actually a perfect bunch to be on an all day tour with. The Kiwi's were super laid back and had a similar sense of humour to Pete and I so it made the company of the day more enjoyable. We arrived in Mexico and saw squirrels, they were so cute!!

We slowly made our way up to the border to go through customs, taking in the sights on the way (I got my passport stamped again, yay!) It was a fairly quick process and once approved to enter into the country we made our way out into Mexico and caught a cab into Tijuana.

I'm not going to lie, Mexico is very dirty, it stinks and there doesn't seem to be any road rules at all. Cars just drive where ever they want too and spend most of the time honking their horns, cutting each other off and with no road lines marked they would just squeeze into whatever gap they imagined they may fit in - it was crazy. The taxi was three seats along in both the back and the front and seat belts were 100% optional. We had to take two seperate taxi's into town in order to transport all of us. Pete, myself a couple of the Kiwi's were lucky and got into the cab with Carlo, the others got sent off on their own with Carlos instructing the driver of where to meet us..thankfully they arrived safely.

There were cops everywhere on bicycles, cars, vans and on motorbikes with sirens constantly going off. Tijuana just seemed to be one big market place with the shop owners trying everything possible to lead you into their shops to try and get you to buy something.

There were little kids following you and shoving jewellery and lollies into your face trying to sell you anything they can, men standing

outside shops doing much the same as you exited each shop and older men had donkeys set up charging money so people could take photos with them.

We did a bit of shopping and exploring in the morning before stopping in at a very authentic Mexican restaurant for lunch. It was a lovely experience as I had never had Mexican food before and love the fact that the first time I did it was IN MEXICO!

We were provided with nachos on the table as a starter, for free. I guess it's just a given in Mexico a bit like how you used to get the peanuts when entering LoneStar in Australia. I tried the tacos and the salsa and boy oh boy, they weren't kidding when they said it was hot..my mouth is still watering!

I ended up ordering the Quesadilla and Pete got beef tacos for lunch, both were nice and the best part was we had a Mexican Mariachi band come into the restaurant and ask if we would like them to perform two songs for us whilst we dine for $10 which is equivalent to $100 of their dollars..Did I mention everything there was cheap?

It was awesome, I am glad we paid the money for it - they sounded great and really made us feel like we were having a true Mexican experience. We then spent the afternoon doing some more shopping, exploring the local streets and surprisingly there were hardly any homeless people there. It was nice to see.

The liquoir stores their are super cheap and offer taste testing of the liquors before you buy them. Pete bought a bottle of Tequila for $40 that in Australia would cost about $100. Then Carlos took us into a Mexican bar that had a tub of tequila with a dead snake in the bottom of it offering shots, it was crazy! They say the snake is in the bottle to add flavour and absorb the alcohol so it wasn't as potent at the end. I've seen the alcohol's in Australia that have worms and scorpions in the bottom but never known one to have a massive bloody snake!!

I bought some souvenirs, learnt from the Kiwi's how to successfully barter and took a few snaps before we started to make our way back to the border and attempt to be let back out into the US again.
That was a little scary, there were guards standing all over the border with guns ready to shoot anyone who tried to escape or enter without the appropriate clearance. It was nothing like I had ever seen before.

We weren't allowed to take many photos of it but...of course I took a few sneaky snaps, before being informed that if I had been caught I probably would have been shot..oops. I guess it's so easy to forget how lax Australia is with things like that, the police rarely pull out their guns to shoot anyone but in places like that it's totally different.

Mexico was a great experience and I am glad I went and was able to see that part of the world. It also helped that Carlos was with us, being a Mexican he was able to speak the language and although most of them could speak fairly good English the ones that couldn't he was able to translate for us pretty easily and inform us when we were being ripped of or not with our purchases.

We made it back to the Hotel tonight quite late but I was super hungry and have been waiting to try In-N-Out Burger and luckily for us it is open until 1am. Tonight I ate a large double-double burger meal with ketchup and a root beer and I will say that it was just as amazing as I imagined it would be. Pete and I will most definitely be back again for another feed before we leave!

It's been a busy few days in the US already and Pete and I are both still trying to combat the jet-lag. It is getting better and the excitement of everything is pushing me through it which is fabulous.

Tomorrow we go to Universal Studios so another big day before we have a couple of chilled days sightseeing some more and hopefully going on a massive shopping spree. Pete and I are both keen to check out the shopping over here - we've been told by so many how great and cheap it is.

Universal tomorrow, yay.
I'll check in again after that :)