Mexico City - The fifth sun

Mexico City &Teotihuacan (Mexico)
07 MARCH - 08 MARCH 2011

The Tukanoan people of the Amazon did not consider their fellow forest dwellers, the Macu, to be people. They would say that the Macu were not born of the anaconda but rather were breathed into being from the dust of the first human, Yeba, the child of Jaguar Woman and Father Sun. They were subhuman, mediators between the realm of the living and the spirits of the forest. I wondered in that sense if the Macu still wondered the earth and if in fact I was some sort of descendant of these people. I mean only three to four months ago I had the mouth of a puma wrapped around my knee whilst politely asking it in Spanish for it to 'chill the hell out' and now, standing atop the pyramid of the sun, acting as a mediator between Jet's post apocalyptic piñata night binge and listening to the spirits of a civilisation that disappeared so abruptly some 1200 years ago it was me that needed to breath a little life into what looked to be quite a torrid day for my cohort. Ahh, the residual effects of being tequilaNated! Still before continuing with the story of how we arrived in Teotihuacan it needs to be pointed out that the little idea actually sprouted in the backstreets of Tijuana, so let me take this story back a few steps!

Back in the days when our bank balances were flatlining and our desires for NYC crumbling under a frontierland evening sky, Frichot and I were throwing around options in what appeared to be a losing battle for the continuation of the wing and a prayer tour. Feasibility studies concluded that options for travelling further south into the heart of Mexico might just allow us the chance of surviving for a few weeks if the kindness of the friends of Frichot fan club were to come to the party - which they in actual fact did and spectacularly so! So right here, right now, big thanks to Warren (muchos gracias) and Jet's flatmate MH for saving us the trouble of having to sell Jets' talents on the streets of Mazatlan! Trust me boys, pickings were slim but some of the Mexican mamas were eyeing Frichot off like a picante morning burrito after an all night tequila bender, it would have been brutal for him but necessary in order to save us!

 Near Hostal Regina - Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico

 Near Hostal Regina - Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico

 Love Bugs in Mexico City - They are all the rage!

 Near Hostal Regina - Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico

 Near Hostal Regina - Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico

Several days after our last ditch attempts to save the tour were realised we cruised into Cuidad de Mexico to commence the last few days of an escapade that had had more lives than a feisty frog (get it, a frog croaks ...constantly!!?? Ahhh, doesn't matter). With a touch of good fortune we had located the Hostal Regina via an hasty search on Hostelworld and landed in their foyer early  on a Monday morning without so much as a hint of the alcohol fuelled antics that would be attacking us within the next few days. We should have known of course, there were tthe old and familiar tell tail signs. Immediately upon arrival a mohawked behemoth with what I thought was a German accent (in fact it was Dutch) made his presence known and introduced himself to us in the following manner, 'Hi, my name is Patrick and I work here. Anything you want, anything you need just ask me. My role here is to get you f**ked up every night'...and you know what, the mighty man stuck to his words and did just that. Now Patrick is kind of an odd fellow. Ten times cheerier than Sydney on it's best mardi gras evening and louder than Ken Done mashed with Maggie T, this guy had Jet colouring his hair purple within 20 mins of our arrival and me ripping out a blinding rendition of Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil in the foyer of the hostel a few mins later. He also had us signing up to a piñata making carnivale of tequila and misguided confetti bombardment that very evening, and this my friends is where our days in Mexico City took a violent but inevitably brilliant turn.

 Seriously, this happened within minutes of arriving at the Hostel - Patrick on duty!

 No kidding, it was really going to be a pinata night!

It sounds relatively tame doesn't it? In fact it sounded like the perfect way that I would be able to cure the nasty bout of insomnia that I had been suffering the last few days. Earlier in the day Patrick had put it to me that I was 'obligated' to partake in the piñata making antics of that evening and added nonchalantly 'Oh and by the way, tomorrow night you'll also be hosting a BBQ!' (but more of that in my next post). 

 ....and so it begins!

 Can you see where it started to go wrong??

Oh yeah, fire fight! Head for the hills hombres!

 It was innocuous enough to commence with. Several randoms at a hostel being guided in the fine art of piñata making and the intricacies of its design. Sitting back in the foyer of what I must say was easily the best hostes I've stayed in, I kind of had it in my mind that this would more than likely be an early night as Teotihuacan was beckoning us into its breaches on the morrow, but something happened. The other misfits that actually turned up to the event were quite cool! Usually at events such as these you encounter one or two people that you click with but it seemed that right at this moment we had close to 10 congregated around a table wondering how the hell they got roped into doing the same thing - and then 'it' commenced. The first few rounds of tequila shots. What good can EVER come of tequila shots, right! Through Patricks' warped guidance and direction we somehow concocted a drinking game that involved the creation of random geography questions, more drinking and the wild throwing of wet rags that quickly turned putrid shades of grey with ensuing throws. I'm not sure if it was the tequila (lol, really, I'm not sure) but we all got a little boisterous with our antics until we realised that there was a huge bagful of confetti that was just waiting to be cast in to the rarefied air of a Hostal Regina evening...and then it was made so! With beers aplenty and regular visits to nearby Oxxo's (the Mexican equivalent of the 7-Eleven that thankfully also sells cheap alcohol), we were throwing confetti bombs for the rest of the evening. It was an odd way to spend a night but it ended up being a hell of a lot of fun and as I've mentioned, it was one of those rare situations where everyone just gets along, so thank you to the following people for making this night such a laugh (Rachel, Patrick, Sophie, Kyall, Tom, Koganti) and a few others whose names escape me. We closed out the evening, or rather morning, at somewhere close to 5am with Rachel and Tom somehow occupying our room until the early hours. Not that I minded too much, I kind of had a thing for Rachel by that time anyway, but hey, no news there, she already knows it (don't you Ms Englishman?). 

 

  Sophie getting ConfettiNated!

 This vendor loved our business! Drunk idiots = muchos pesos!

[Link to the Adventures of Jet Frichot - the camote incident]

Waking up just a few hours after our ordeal however proved to be the real litmus test. Sensitivity to bright lights, a dull throbbing headache, an arm that had lost all sensation hours ago and a bed full of confetti? In those first few mins of a new morning I had myself questioning the ongoings of the mind bending piñata event and how exactly the outcome had led to the situation that I now found myself in. I know there are informants out there that can answer those questions for me and if they were ever to arrive in Sydney, well...anyway...I digress.

Teotihuacan

[Check out Frichot's vid of Teotihuacan here!] 

Teotihuacan had been my big selling point to Frichot back in Tijuana several days earlier. With funds dwindling I put it to him that seeing this archaelogical site just outside of Mexico City might just be our ticket to getting this tour back on track (aside from the fact that it was a place that I'd always wanted to visit). As we sat in silence at the breakfast table that morning however and mentally patched together some of the shenanigans and sometimes vile concoctions that had made their way into our systems, I looked at the dull, listless shell that was Frichot and wondered how in the world I'd manage to get him standing let alone riding in a mini-van for several hours just so he could walk in the blistering sun for another few hours and then climb the highest legally climable pyramid in the world. As Frichot 'dry wrenched' a few times whilst at the table he looked up at me sullenly as just said this, 'Go hard or go home mate'. We were definitely back on!

 Frichot - the aftermath

 Google it - seriously, just Google it!

So a couple things that I didn't know about Teotihuacan or Mexico City for that matter. I had assumed that Teotihuacan was actually an Aztec site, wrong! The site was in actual fact quite a large cultural and commercial centre that existed some 1000 years prior to that of the Aztecs. At its zenith in the first half of the first millennium AD there were something like 200,000 people that inhabited the complex, although the specificity of the ethnic groups who lay claim to the site vary (Nahua, Otomi or Totonac). This therefore had me asking the obvious question, 'then who the hell were the Aztecs and where was their hideout?' - good question, am glad I asked it.

 First glimpse of the Pyramid of the Moon from the Avenue of the Dead - Teotihuacan - Mexico

 Frichot loved the stairs!

Teotihuacan - Mexico

The Aztecs were a people of central Mexico who from approximately the 13th century adopted the city of Tenochtitlan, located on an island in Lake Texcoco as the capital of their empire. Whilst this in itself doesn't sound that impressive there are a coupld of 'add-ons' to this snippet of information that may make it so, 1) The city of Tenochtitlan was built in a manner very similar to Venice, small cities and villages all tied together by a series of canals. Indeed when Hernan Cortes and his crew turned up to Tenochtitlan in 1521 they termed it the 'Venice of the Americas', just before they set about destroying it, and 2) The entirety of Mexico City is actually built on top of what was once Lake Texcoco! That to me was quite a headspin. Where the hell did all that water go and how did they manage such a feet of ingenuity and engineering (all questions that I haven't had the chance of Googling as yet). 

 Pyramid of the Moon - Teotihuacan - Mexico

 Pyramid of the Sun - Teotihuacan - Mexico

 Frichot with the Pyramid of the Sun in the background

Our Aztec buddies aside, arriving at Teotihuacan that afternoon had me sinking back into some of the golden memories that I have of my first arrival to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The size and scale of the site is daunting even by modern day standards, let alone for a pre-Columbian people of two milennia ago, and just the same as Angkor, it's that initial realisation of enormity that just has you mesmerised from the start.

 Pyramid of the Moon taken from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun

 On top of the sun

Trying out my Indiana Jones look - yeah, I kind of like it

 Looking toward the Pyramid of the Sun and Avenue of the Dead

Walking around the complex for something like three hours, with Frichot losing half his weight somewhere along the Avenue of the Dead (aptly named I'd say), we managed to climb up to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun and take in both the view of the complex and the entirety of the surrounding area. Sometimes when you take a seat and try to absorb places such as these attempting to use adjectives to adequately describe them or provide a sense of perspective just doesn't seem to cut it. What I will say is this. Once again, on the wild ride that I've had for the last year I feel more than fortunate to have been provided with the chance of seeing a place that I've always wanted to see. To have done that with a great mate of mine, no matter how ill he was (even though he managed to tough it out quite successfully) is something that I'll always remember and cherish.

 

Mazatlan - St.Christopher in his cadillac dream

  

Mazatlan (Mexico) 

03 MARCH - 06 MARCH 2011 

Staring out of his window as the world rushes by, Arthur Robinson closes the glass and replies, ´I dream of ballerinas and I don´t know why but I see cadillac´s sailing...out there in the shadow of the modern machine walks St.Robinson in his cadillac dream

Offering protection to travellers was the manner in which Saint Christopher, via his unfortunate martyrdom, became the the revered patron of all travellers. Closing in on Maztalan and feeling the sharp pains of bus seat punishment in my lower back I wondered if an ethereal chat with St. Christopher might in some way allow for the granting of a penance for all my travelling sins over the years. So there I was on the Central Pacific coast of Mexico thinking that my well intentioned thoughts could somehow bring home tomorrow to today, and there of course I remained, endlessly waiting. I assume that if Saint Christopher were to hit the roads of Mexico in this day and age that he´d want to cruise the wilds of the Mexican countryside in the drivers seat of a cadillac, wearing some sinister black shades, his hair blowing as he coolly acknowledged fellow hombres as they danced around their taco stands hoping to acquire his patronage. Now would not that be the way for the patron saint of travellers to roll!? These are the things that I contemplate as I dance across the Mexican landscape in a modest, if not honourable form of cross country travel. I ask you Saint Christopher, please ´hook me up´ the next time I hit the road!

 The ´place of the deer´, i.e, the meaning of Mazatlan in the Nahuatl language lies on the Pacific coast directly across from the most southerly point of the Baja Californian peninsula. Cruising into town on a beautiful bluebird afternoon I was looking forward to getting down beach side of this resort town and checking out its colonial style historic centre. My dreams of swaying palms and beach huts filled with Corona induced conversation was briefly destroyed  however when the reality of the location of our accommodation hit home. Really, why I should ever trust a blurb that stipulates online that the location of your nightly abode is ´5 mins from everything´ is beyond me? I mean, ok, if ´everything´ means the local bull fighting ring then maybe they would have an argument but I should have known better. In any case it wasn´t really that bad, we did find taxis in the town to be cheap and the local bus lines even cheaper.

Mazatlan - Mexico

Mazatlan - Mexico

[Mazatlan street buskers on - The Adventures of Jet Frichot] 

Making our way down to the playa Camaron and playa Gaviotas we stopped for a while at the northern end of the beach and saw how it beautifully stretched in a crescent shape for over 5kms to the south, ending up at the headland of Los Pinos, which in turn acted as the ´invite´ to the historical centre of town. After hiding out in the wild west frontier town of Tijuana for nearly five days and then peering endlessly into the shadows for hours on end on the journey down the rhythmic rolling of Pacific waves and the endless blue that met it´s other blue cousin at the horizon was just the tonic for me. I´ve got to say, I´m not sure how it was that I made the transition from being a creature of snow, ice and gentle carves down pine laden slopes to a man that thinks that food tastes better when there´s sand between his toes and a mojito in tow but San Sebastian, you have a lot to answer for.

Mazatlan - Mexico

Mazatlan - Mexico

Mazatlan - Mexico

Stopping several times for beers during the day the hours just faded away as the evening hues started to paint their way across the sky. Sitting down on the beach at one of the huts watching some of the local fisherman attend to their nets before the night closed out I realised how odd it was that my negated plans of South America had actually thrown me onto a Mexican beach with one of my best mates. Had I have still been on my original journey then I would have been in my last few days, more than likely somewhere in Rio on a beach doing  pretty much the same thing. Somehow the dice that I rolled produced a perfectly acceptable replica but replaced the Atlantic for the Pacific. Alright St.Christopher, you might just have pulled through for me. What´s more, news on the street was that we had arrived in Mazatlan just at the start of their very own carnivale, it´s almost as if the cosmic forces got together and decided that my stolen wallet in La Paz was a fairly raw deal. As I´ve said a few times in my posts thus far, I don´t know why luck has decided to touch my crown right at this moment but I´m happy to claim it.

First night in Mazatlan - taken from the Oyster Bar

Our second day in Mazatlan ran a little like the first, which wasn´t too bad a deal at all. Have always liked the concept of the 2 for 1 deal, have got to figure out a way to trade futures on daily wish lists. Wonder if that would ever catch on? In any case, waking up at our now Mexican standard time of 12pm or just ´mas tarde´ we approached Mazatlan with the speed and conviction that one might have when they operate on ´island time´ - things get done but somehow the concept of expedience just gets traded off against absolute necessity. It´s all  about ´mañana my man!´.

Pueblo Viejo - Mazatlan - Mexico

Mazatlan - Mexico

Another calendar shoot for Frichot!

Pueblo Viejo -Mazatlan - Mexico

Settling into the historic part of town (pueblo viejo) for a few afternoon hours I got an appreciation for what actually makes Mazatlan the draw card that it is. The cobbled streets, faded colours of  buildings, crumbling edifices and drifting sounds of mariachi bands melding into the scenic set of this quaint locale, it drew my mind back to a few places that I had encountered within the last year. There´s always something pleasing about a location triggering a sentimental dose of another place and time. Ahh Cancerians, we can be, how would one say it elegantly? Soft cocks at times! As one crafty English lady said to me at 4am yesterday morning, ´Man up!´ - and really, who was it that added the additional softener to my mental fabric? Never the less, a walk back out of peublo viejo and down to the beach for an encore performance of our previous nights corona´s under the stars was called for. Watching the sun drop out of sight on its westward journey and admiring its lingering after affects accompanied by the lingering after affects of the alcoholic kind I entered into a peacefully buoyant state. I remembered that years ago in high school screen printed a shirt with the words ´Pacific dreams´ on it. Now not wanting to go into why screen printing on a Tuesday afternoon was actually part of our curriculum, the question of why the hell I chose to print ´Pacific dreams´ on my shirt when there were other far less cheesier options, albeit cliched band name options, is something that I´ll never resolve. Still Mazatlan can now happily sit alongside some of my other realised Pacific dreams such as Tahiti, Hawaii and Vanuatu, and as my boys from Ratcat might neatly add at this point, ´and that ain´t bad´.

Mazatlan - Mexico

From the places where you'd rather be - a Corona induced haze

[Link to the Adventures of Jet Frichot in Mazatlan - YouTube]

I'm a sucker for sunsets, what can I say?

The sun commencing yet another journey across the Pacific

A Mexican sunset can be aaaaalllright!

Heading out of our hut haven later than evening we set out down for the peninsula of Los Pinos and went to check out if the Mazatlan Carnivale of 2011 had anything to offer. In short, it didn´t. A bunch of taco stands, wandering streets performers and intermittent stages with bands of less than mediocre talent made carnivale look like a Rooty Hill street party gone wrong. I mean think Rooty Hill, add an airy feel of cheap cheeriness, mix it with moustached fiends who appear to be afficionados in bastardising the Dali look and then smear it with cream cheese (I don´t know why I went with cream cheese, just felt like I was on a roll) and then just maybe you´ll be able to acquire an image of carnivale 2011. The best performance of the night went to a bunch of Brazilian samba dancers who looked as though they were about to burst their breaches. It was kind of awesome actually! Aside from that the most enjoyment that we got was when we ditched the crowds and ducked into a ´spiffy´ little rock joint called the Time Out. It´s the type of small bar that Sydney would die for and probably a type that Melbourne is renowned for. We hung out their for a few hours under the inimitable moves of Mick Jagger on the overhead flat screens, downed a few pina coladas and contemplated whether we did really enjoy walks in the rain? Night two in Mazatlan drew its curtains on us at this point. We located Mazatlan´s finest golf cart driver and sequestered him for our journey back to El Bucanero.

Waking up on our ´exit strategy´ day in Mazatlan we encountered a phenomena that we had heard of but not realised for quite sometime, ´the morning´. Since Vegas our mornings had been spent in a slumber and it was only for the sake of figuring out a way to Mexico City that we needed to beat the midday alarm. Sorting ourselves out at central de autobuses we managed to acquire a 2pm ride to the capital and thus had a few hours up our sleeves to play with before departure. Accepting one last opportunity for some time on the sand we had ourselves a great little seafood feast and wiled away the hours on the back of few ales. This however is where our travel itinerary turned a little nasty. Rocking back to the bus terminal with 15 mins to spare we made our way for the bus stands only to be told that the bus had left? What the hell? My Spanish wasn´t quite able to get the point over the line that the bus had by its own accord decided to leave before it´s scheduled departure time and the man explaining it to me couldn´t quite get across to me that the time ´we thought it was´ was not the time it actually was. From what we later could deduce somewhere between Tijuana and Mazatlan we´d lost an hour and the bus that we had anticipated to be on right now was already cruising the Ventura highway! With a bit of a song and dance at the bus counter and an emotional, appealing story to the manager we did manage to acquire a standby seat to MC about 2hrs later. Saint Christopher obviously had our backs yet again and we were now once again off in our own cadillac dreams to continue the tour on a wing, and perhaps a prayer or two included.

 

Tijuana to Mazatlan - Confessions of a border jumper

Tijuana (Mexico) to Mazatlan (Mexico)

03 MARCH 2011

I use to think that jumpìng a border anywhere was the duck´s nuts, setting foot in a new land, accepting a unique welcome stamp in my little booklet of ´proof of citizenship´, being the Neil Armstrong of my family, these were some of the travel moments that I use to look forward to. I recall one trip a few years ago when I did my very best to convince a similarly hard headed hombre of mine that jumping the border from Laos to Burma, even for just a few hours, would have been a worthwhile experience. His preference on the other hand was to travel ´lines´, you know, do the length of a country, cut across continents, take a few lines down in some outlandish Bolivian prison. Sometimes I get the concept of ´lines´ confused, apologies it´s my advancing age ofcourse.

For a few weeks prior to the start of this escapade Frichot had been pushing the cause of Tijuana. I knew why ofcourse. He had become the border jumper that I once was and whilst I didn´t so mind the concept of hanging three feet within the Mexican/Mexican´t border there was always the desire to head south, much further south and check out what the United Mexican States had to offer (really, that´s it´s official name - Google it bro´).

The Mexican/Mexican´t border

What I had kind of deduced from the haphazard organisation of the world wind Frelisher wing and a prayer tour was this, that one, the inconsistency and intermmitent transmission of funds would produce scarcity and scarcity in turn would lead to absurd and or enlightened decision making - take your pick. I mean it´s what lead us to slyly abduct a basket of deep fried pickles from a random Canadian guy who was oddly pondering over them in an equivalently random rock bar somewhere along the strip in Vegas. It was also the reason that hangovers were a constant companion as 1.2litre bottles of Corona should always be considered with the good grace in which they´re received. Secondly as logistics co-ordinator and associate to the tour´s purveyor of finances I had the ability to acutely focus the fiscal dilemmas of our journey and redesign them in accordance to our more modest realities. It´s why the return back to LA for a cross continental flight to NYC was postponed to another day and its why the bus out of TJ turned south at the border instead of heading north.

On the road to Mazatlan

On the road to Mazatlan

Now if you haven´t heard of the Mexican town of Mazatlán then don´t fear, up until five or so days ago I hadn´t either. In fact we probably wouldn´t have even stopped here but for the fact that the big woosbag Frichot couldn´t handle a 48hr straight run from Tijuana to Mexico City on a rehabilitated cement truck that now functioned as a people mover. Aside from the fact that most bus seats are uncomfortable when you´re seated in them for 2hrs straight or more what else is there to complain about? Lack of sleep, screaming toddlers, huge Mexican dudes blasting Sepultura from the back rows, all in an honest days work of the budget traveller right? In any case I relented to Frichot´s demands of splitting the journey in two and through a little reconnaissance found a nice little beach town on the Central Pacific coastline that would fit the bill for a quaint little two day layover.

Out of business

With a scenic tour of TJ under our belts on the morning of departure, provided kindly by the taxi driver that thought I was speaking Swahili instead of Spanglish, we boarded the 10·30am ride south for what was going to be a 28hr run down to Mazatlán. I could already see the fear in the eyes of Frichot as he rocked back and forth in seat number 35 of the red eye express. He didn´t know it at the time be he was just about to get hit with a healthy dose of chicken express fever, a rare disease that strikes at the internal ´acceptance nervous system´ of pundits of an overnight express. Irritation and mental stability are attacked first, uncontrollable bowel movements follow and the finally the individual ends up in a ball of misery on the aisle floor, hysterically laughing at themselves for their own stupidity at accepting such a journey. Essentially he was now f**ked!

Leaving TJ that morning we encountered a plethora of ramshackle buildings that hung precariously to the hills that rounded the city, it was if God has just run his first ´How to become a builder workshop´ and the results remained for all to see. As we continued I felt the slow onset of drowsiness attack me and my eyelids started to drop below the horizon. I must have been knocked out for some time as the next thing I remember we were in the midst of a wild mountains that were totally boulder-ridden and completely lacking in vegetation. More than worthy of snapping a few photos and an excellent way to wake up from a slumber induced by the gentle sway of Mexican roads.

Final light - 16 hrs to go

Cutting through the border town of Mexicali and then following the Mexican/Mexican´t border that had us peering into California and then Arizona for the rest of the afternoon. As a relatively cheap way of funding a tourist drive through the desert it was more than interesting. With night falling and the scenery hiding being its evening shade curtain both Frichot and I stared off into the abyss for the next few hours, a mind numbing experience if ever there was one. A lack of sleep on an all-nighter with the inability to switch on a light for reading purposes only means that there´s time for personal reflection and contemplation, as superficial as it can be at times.

Day of arrival

With the first rays of sun lighting the interior of the cabin in the morning and a roadside stop  that had us bleeding tears of caffeine in the hope of managing our levels of comfort into Mazatlan, we cruised into the cozy Pacific Coast town somewhere after 2pm. The painful ordeal for Frichot was now over and a 2-3 day hiatus was now in store. Not that I wanted to burst the little bubble of sweet euphoria that Jet was riding at this point after conquering the 28hrs down but I knew that just around the corner there was another ride waiting. It wasn´t going to be 28hrs but the run to Mexico City was still going to be enough to cause a little pain...sometimes it´s the things left unsaid that can be the most painful, right!?

Tijuana - Smartraveller - reconsider your need to travel

Tijuana (Mexico)
25 FEB - 28 FEB 2011

So our boring government gave the following advice - reconsider your need to travel to Ciudad Juarez, Mexicali and Tijuana due to the very high level of drug related violence. My answer to this, I did reconsider and found that $1.60 for a 1.2litre bottle Corona was a good enough reason!

When you tell people that you're heading to Vegas there's that moment of individual reflection, the moment when the recipient of the question draws from their own memories and conciously thinks back to what they left there. However when you tell people that you're heading towards Tijuana the response that you quite often get is 'Oh man, good luck'. Seriously, time after time people were wishing us luck in our endeavours of journeying to the frontier and possibly beyond. As a matter of interest I also checked our also supremely accurate governmental travel advice site Smartaveller  for their recommendation. Survey said, 'Travel to Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana not recommended at this time unless absolutely necessary'. Is not $1.60 price for a 1.2 litre bottle of Corona an absolutely necessary reason to make it down to TJ? I think so!

Welcome to Tijuana - Mexico

Tijuana - Mexico

Somewhere close to 20yrs ago I made my way here for the first time on a day excursion with my aunty as an escape from staying in Los Angeles for a week, (man that was a long week). Never the less I remembered it as being full of life and activity. There was nothing we witnessed at the time that could have made us immediately draw the conclusion that it should have been a place that we should have been deterred from going. Admittedly these days the drug cartels are running rampant in Mexico, the border towns exist as the last outposts or rather the closest points of entry for any goods that need to cross the peso/dollar boundary. Not that the cartels would seriously use these commercial routes as their main channel into the US however, they have other ways of smuggling things across that line!

After a rather successful all-nighter in Vegas that commenced with a few shows and included prolonged hours of drinking, Frichot and I boarded a Greyhound bus whose travel line would see us crossing back over the Sierra Nevada's, having a brief stop in LA and then following the Pacific coastline down through San Diego and into Tijuana. Reflecting back I probably remember about 30mins of this 6-7hr journey, Vegas by this time had done such a number on me that the double seat  I occupied was comfort enough to have me in a blissful slumber for most of the duration of this ride. I think Jet may have caught just a handful of minutes less than me which in turn beckons the question, did the full journey really take place at all? I guess when when a tree falls...well, you know the drill.


We arrived in TJ somewhere close to 8pm accompanied by that somehow always ever present bout of nervous anticipation that attaches itself to you just before jumping a border. This occasion was also a little stranger than most. There was no exit stamp from the US side and basically once we had disembarked the bus we were just pointed down a dimly lit pathway through a set of  high revolving steel gates and into Mexico. At this point I made some enquiries as to whether an entry stamp or visa was required to kick it in Mexico and the only answer that was worth the peso it was written on was that if we wanted to acquire a tourist visa it was going to cost us the privilege of 200 pesos a piece (I wondered as to who would be pocketing that cash?). We were then told that if we just wanted to stay in TJ for a few days then a visa or entry stamp would not be required. I didn't get the logic behind what was being said but reasoned that a $20 note saved is a $20 found when buying alcohol anywhere, and one thing that I did know about TJ was that it was certainly alcohol friendly to all - Love All, Serve All - a country that lives by the Hard Rock motto.

My question is, why can´t you rollerblade over the border?

The grand arch of TJ

What amazed me was how quickly the scenery changed within the 100mtrs from the official US exit to the official Mexican entry point. As we walked down a relatively small pathway with accompanying high walls on either side we could see a bustling street just waiting to draw us into the fold. Through one set of steel revolving doors we were instantaneously flung into the mix of a TJ bizarre lottery. The proximity of vibrant activity so close to the border really felt as  though Mexico had decided to occupy every possible inch of its territory and had decided to push up as close as it possibly could to the bedroom of its US cousin, almost pleading for it to be kind enough to let them in. Walking right next to the border a few days later you could see the distinct demarkation point between the two with buildings on the Mexican side almost utilising the border as fence for their own property and civilisation in the US nowhere to be seen.

Hanging out on the corner of Revolucion and 3rd, I´m guessing

As we swung through the revolving doors with luggage in tow we were immediately greeted by street hawkers spruiking their wares to both the weary and unwary, then there were also the food vendors out in force whose street carts were illuminated with what felt like 10 watt bulbs. Enough for you to probably ascertain what you were just about to be consuming and probably enough to allow the vendor the opportunity to grab the correct number of coins that would make their transaction worthwhile. With the mix of the accompanying smoke off their grills, the dimly lit streets, the shady (but I must say magnificently moustached) characters that appeared out of the darkness and the wily taxi drivers awaiting across the road like circling sharks, Mexico made an immediate impression and I must say that to a large extent I was happy to leave behind the neon light tan that I had picked up in Vegas.

Why?

It´s the Devil inside that gets you everytime!

So how about this for a line when encountering a random tout on a street corner of TJ, 'Hey man, where you from?' - [insert your answer] - 'What you looking for man? Cigars? Massage? Bitches?Donkey shows?'. Say what now? I seriously thought that donkey shows were things of urban myth but apparently herr on the frontier it's a commodity sold to the mentally deranged and depraved, yes I'm looking at you Frichot when I say this!  In any case we successfully dodged those bullets and went on to spend our first night in TJ cruising the main tourist strip of Revolucion with pesos in hand and time to kill. After a few hits and misses we did make our way into a large vacant place that had a rock band performing a range of decent covers. We made camp their for quite sometime, downing a case of Sol and listening to the musical stylings of this TJ band in the cavernous surrounds of what I recognised as the old Hard Rock cafe site. The only thing wrong with the place was the 'open door policy' and I'm talking in a literal sense here, the rollaway doors were wide open and the place was freezing, well, that was until such time that a swarm of bikers made their way through the entrance and virtually parked at the foot of the stage. I did mention that this was the wild west didn't I? That was enough to bring a little warmth to the place and it definitely added to the gun touting ambience that TJ is now renowned for.

It was a ´Sol Revival´ on night one!

Once again it felt as though we were on a Vegas time clock. Punching in at the hotel at somewhere close to 4am and waking up in the later hours of the afternoon, the warmly ball of fuzz that the people of the day call the sun was fading out of sight when we made a return onto the streets. Memories of the previous night came flooding back within the context of sober conversation. At some point we recalled that Frichot did take down six hot dogs in one setting and in the same breath lead a boisterous group of some 15 Mexicans in a first time rendition (from what I've been told) of his very unrehearsed 'USA is gay'. How that came to him at that time of morning and from where he picked up a random bandito with an acoustic I'll never know, but there was definite activity on the corner of Revolucion and Emiliano Zapata, one for the ages, until such time that a San Diego native pulled him up and provided him and everyone in the vicinity with a severe dressing down. In a role that is actually quite uncommon for me, it was me that was pressed into the role of peacemaker and after a few mins I was able to successfully avert what could have been an international slugfest that would have had us all in a TJ prison cell for a night. From what I've heard, probably not the best way to earn a free nights accommodation.

Frichot & Ivan at the Viper Bar - Tijuana - Mexico

1.2 litres of Mexican goodness

 Caguama - two of those and the party is well and truly on the way to victory!

Night two in Tijuana followed a now familiar pattern, choose a bar, drink away and meet randoms. We were getting to be quite adept at selecting an appropriate venue and even more so at choosing randoms for a night of frivolity although with that said Frichot quite often does 95% of the groundwork in those scenarios. I usually just sit back, hold up an end at one side of the bar and chat away if I'm interested. At least the music in the place was half decent, can't really fault a venue whose welcoming song is something by Rage Against The Machine! As you could probably guess we spent hours at the Viper Bar, 1.2 litre bottles of Corona and Vittoria at the ready and some heavy handed moshing at the front of the room for all those drunk enough to not feel the effects of bruises and broken bones until noon. Hand in hand with the $1.60 beers went the corner taco stand that made some of the best soft tacos and torta's that I've ever had. Somehow Frichot again managed to find a random with an acoustic in tow and once he sparked up it was several versus of La Bamba for anyone and everyone that was passing by on 6th street.

Frichot warming up for his rendition of La Bamba - the crowd went nuts!

Tacos and the odd torta - this little place had some amazing food

Corona, it will never fail you

None too suprisingly our days once again turned into nights as we kept rolling on, drinking into the early hours. The following days in TJ were spent in much the same manner, cruising Revolucion, choosing bars and shooting down what they had to offer. Somewhere at this point also came the realisation that our fiscal situation was acquiring more question marks than a sixth graders school report on abstinence.Several calls to financial institutions, intermmediaries and the 'Friends of Frelisher' society had us in no clearer position to decide which direction we'd be taking for the next two weeks. Unfortunately our falling stocks did bring on the realisation that turning back into the US and acquiring an LA to NYC flight for a pittance would not be possible. With time on our side and a southward journey into the heart of Mexico looking far more viable we made the decision to head for Mexico City and particularly aimed up for the pyramids of Teotihuacan. Achieving this half-baked plan on the back of a two kebab budget was ofcourse going to be something else entirely but as I always say, 'where there is a will, there is a way', and something I definitely know about Jet and myself is that we're always willing to be a little loco in times of need!

Downtown TJ at sunset

They have a ´thing´ for Zebra´s in TJ - seriously!

I kind of think it´s because they´re ashamed of their all encompassing ´donkey love´ - fake stripes or not, it´s still a donkey!

So to the few additional days that we spent in TJ acquiring funds and sorting through the red tape we say ´thankyou´. We had a great time and met a few good people along the way. If Jet gets his band back on the tracks and my band managment skills pick up then we might just be back to rock the joint, hard!