It’s been eight years since I have been to Mexico.
Let me tell you, Mexico is still a cluster fuck for the California driver.
You cross the border and laws what fucking laws?
Every intersection is a traffic circle.
It’s a desperate dance in a two ton Japanese SUV to make it towards the left hand side of the highway and the toll road towards Ensenada. You are desperately merging lanes towards the toll road, because no one wants to get lost in Tijuana as the sun is crashing into the Pacific Ocean in the distance.
You are of course, terrified of the federales ( Mexico police) so you drive the speed limit, trying to drive the twists and turns of the toll road along PCH Baja version as your mind tries to commute miles an hour to kilometers ( what the fuck is 110 kilometers per hour?!) as you also try to enjoy the sun crashing into the ocean, the unbelievable Baja sunset to your right behind the burnt sand hills.
We simply don’t have desolate vistas like this in California, you think passing one playa after another on the road to Rosarito Beach.
As you leave the slums of Tijuana and you see the poor people who are living in the slums of the Tijuana River (even this sad shit filled river is so low in this year of ever lasting drought) for a moment my heart is full of sadness as I get just a glimpse of the poor souls who live by the river and walk the sides of the freeway with canes and shopping carts and we had turkey and lobster for our thanksgiving fest today in Del Norte.
As Californians we are the lucky ones.
It’s been eight years since I visited Baja.
The economy, the world has changed since I was twenty two and drinking margaritas at a beach house beside the ocean.
But Mexico will always be kind of the same; smoke filled nights, people burning trash and the waves crashing on the sands.
