Crossing the Border

Distance- 60km

For a few weeks Mexico had been on my mind. Most Americans we told we were headed to Mexico warned us against it - one lady made us (forced, no really!) read a newspaper article about the drug gangs and all the killing and murder in Mexico.

But from most of what we read, including official warnings, the violence is limited to small sections of Mexico, not where we planned to travel. And most (some of them said it was too dangerous now...) of those Americans who actually travel to Mexico said we'd be fine - but that the traffic would be our biggest enemy.

Still, many of the cyclists we'd met had decided against Mexico and others were still turning the idea over in their minds - like us.

After a lot of research and reading the blogs of others who recently crossed the border we decided to go for it.


At first we simply walked through the border, no-one checked our bags, asked for any money, or even gave us a second look, but then we remembered that it was a good idea to pay for an official visa so we tried to find where we had to do this.

We were pretty surprised to see six other cyclists applying for their tourist card at the border at the same time as us. And boy was the border busy! We could just imagine how busy it must have been before people worried about travel to Mexico.

It took us about an hour to fill out the forms (with the help of a Spanish couple), pay the entry fee and get our passports stamped.

The Spanish couple and a Canadian couple had decided to catch a bus to Ensenada, about 95miles so that they could avoid having to cycle across the section they perceived as 'dangerous and hilly.' But we decided to ride to Rosarita with an American couple. An American man who works in Tijuana was to guide us through the first part of the city on his way to work.

Finding the road signed for Rosarita and Ensenada was fairly easy, and despite one steep hill it was an interesting ride - right along the border fence. The warnings about traffic were mostly correct, but once we were out of Tijuana and on the toll road it was a lot better. And the traffic was never as bad as Indonesia (which we'd been led to believe).

So now we're in Mexico. And food is cheap again! For US $8 we got a massive feast of chicken, tortillas, salsa, beans, salad and drinks. We could barely eat half of it!

I think we're going to like Mexico.