Mexico Trip!
So last weekend I went to Mexico with the fam! It was a blast, good times were had by all. Rosarito is a really cool little beach town. Think Ventura mixed with like downtown Santa Barbera with a Mexican flair.
So here is the timeline and chain of events fo the weekend!
So on Saturday morning at what I like to call the ass crack of dawn, or around 7:00am I get the call, my parents, my sister and her boyfriend are on their way to pick me up and hit the road. Luckily I already packed and was all ready to go, or so I thought. You know how it is you always forget something!
So they get here around 7:45 or so, and I load all my shit and hit the road.
FUCK! I forgot my toiletries in the house, lol, drop my mom off at starbucks to get coffee for everyone and head back to the house. Get my shit, stop at the bank to get money for the trip and pick my mom up.
Finally on the road.
Now the drive down there is mostly uneventful, I mean besides the fact that we were driving a Toyota Highlander. Not a huge car and all five of us are big people. I mean my sister is the littliest one and she's 5'10" and 150! So me my sister and her boyfriend are stuck in the back of this car. The one saving grace, we all like the same music on a whole, and thanks to thank my parents relent and let us put on some good house, breaks and DnB the whole way!
Now it only takes about 3 hours to get down to the border crossing, and if any of you have made the trip to San Diego then I won't bore you with and details.
The border crossing though, that shit was fucking insane! As SOON as you cross over the border in to Mexico, the lines on the road, DISAPPEAR!
Now everone is driving like total maniacs and basically deciding on their own where the lines are and such, so it's a bit stressful. My dad, who is driving, is totally on edge, because he doesn't deal with stress well.
Now for those of you who havent's been to Tijuana, or anywhere south of the border. I was shocked at the TRASH, it's just everywhere, people seems to just throw it out their doors. Next is the smell, because of that trash, and the broken sewer mains, and just general filth.
Then there is the walls, Mexico's side of the border is walled by nothing more than rusty corrugated steel fencing, then ther the the "no man's land" a few hundred yards of empty space between the fences, then the US side fence, a steel and concrete monstrocity that stretches as far as the eye can see and is about 20' high. Craziness.
Now the road are still confusing as fuck, and some people seem to think that traffic too slow and it's okay to just ride in the shoulder to avoid the wait. NUTS! However we make it into and through Tijuana in one piece, find the highway to Rosarito okay and get going.
At first it's just as bad as the rest of the roads, then we start getting clear lane lines, I'm confused, until I realize that this is a Toll Road, stretching from Tijuana down to Cabo San Lucas, the 1 highway, beatiful! It's just as nice as any other 2 lane highway in the sates, because every so often you have to pay about $2.40 to drive it.
Now I still see lots of nasty little barrios with trash everywhere, but most of the area near the toll-road is pretty nice. Rosarito is about 18 miles south of the border and we get into town around 12:30 or so, we get to the condos we are going to be staying in.
Now I need to describe these condos, it's a 7 story building, with about 4 condos per floor. going price? $500,000.00 for a two bedroom two bath.
All granite flooring, huge patio, totally gorgeous. You can even drink the tap water if you want, each sink has a reverse osmoisis filtering system. Just leave it at these are probably the most high end Condos in Rosarito!
Okay, so we get there around 12:30 the first thing you see when after you park in the nice gated lot and enter the building, is a long hallway, leading out to the HUGE Infinity pool, you know the ones without an edge so it looks like you could just swim on out the ocean. With a matching Infinity Jacuzzi, huge pool deck for sunning the the like.
We go upstairs, and wait something's funny, the people who rented this place before us haven't gotten their stuff out! Lol, only in Mexico, luckily the security guard is nice enough to call them and get them to get their shit out, but we still have to wait for 2 hours while they clean the place.
So we all pile back into the card and head for Downtown!
Downtown Rosarito is a trip, absolute chaos loosly reined in by everyone just wanting to have a good time. Now we are down here in the middle of the spring break season, so there are TONS of kids running around, and 1pm drunk and stupid it's hilarious. So we park the car down near a club called Izzy's and just start walking around. There are more shops in a two block radius than I've ever seen, then there is the open air market with hawkers selling everything from Cuban Cigars to Katanas and Sunglasses to Prada knock off bags! If you like to shop, haggle and get cool random shit it's like heaven.
After that we take a walk down the beach, check out Papas and Beer, and all the other clubs, well walk by them and see a bunch of college and highschool students drunk barely after noon, lol
They rent quads and horses on the beach, so you kinda have to watch your back, because they let you take off on either without a guide, so some drunk fool on a horse for the first time could be galloping at full clip and not see you, the whole thing is crazy. The beaches are gorgeous though. On the way back to the car we stop at this awesome little Churro stand, $1 for a bag of like 6 little Churros, soo damn good!
I end up splurging on a nice Cuban cigar, $10, beautiful, and look forward to smoking it once we get back.
On the way back we stop at this huge department/grocery store, it's like a Costco on crack, but it's probably pretty high end down there. The rents get some Tequila, beers and limes, and we head back to the Condos
Soooo, after a few hours of killing time, we go back, unload the car, and get things unpacked. Mommy makes margaritas right away, and me and the Pops go down to the taco stand down the street to get fish tacos to eat.
We manage to get $15 tacs, a bottle of Tapa Tio, and container of salt for like $20 bucks, and man I gotta tell you that these were like the BEST god damn tacos I've ever eaten. I tear through my alloted 3, and manage to split the one my Mom didn't eat with my Dad, good shit.
By then I'm wiped from the trip, and just go sit on the blacony, and smoke my Cuban for bit, everyone else goes downstairs to soak in the Jacuzzi and I end up passing out for the night.
So that's just Saturday!
Sunday morning, 6:00am, sunlight streaming through the balcanoy window. Me being stuck sleeping on the couch, and becuase I've been sleeping since 6pm the day before, I'm awake and bolt upright. One of the most gorgeously semi-cloudy days is staring me in the face. I get up, go out on the balcony and light up a cig, and soak the morning ocean air in, the tide is all the way in and I can see Cormorants diving and riding the swells, it's a neat experince. I realize how much I love the ocean, and how I don't get enough of it.
Not much later, my early bird mother gets up and we make some food talk about the view and so on. Coffe, pasteries, and a cuban cigar, and no worries. I'm in heaven. We joke about how we need to win the lottery and live like this all the time. It's fun, I missed early mornings with my mom. We get breakfast going, we make a dozen eggs, bacon, and we have more pasteries for everyone.
So slowly everyone wakes up, and as usual my Dad is being an ass and doesn't want to do anything today. It's around 9:30 or so, and my mom, sister, her boyfriend and I decide to go shopping, I'm driving. Lol, the experience is a trip.
We hit several stores close to the Condos and look through all kinds of cool hand made art, furniture and so on. Everything is so cheap, if I handn't been totally broke I would have bought several cool little items.
Then we head downtown, well the far north side of town, because my sister had spotted some monkey's at a pet shop. So we stop, look for the monkeys, take some pics, and we all want to save all the dogs, and so on from their tiny cages, however we know we can't save them, so we move on.
Downtown we explore all the neat little shops, the open air market and the area in general.
Shopping down there is a trip, each little booth owner is nearly begging you to buy buy buy, now now now, good price, blah blah blah...lol
I end up getting a really killer ashtrap, it's round with a circle of skeletons all laying on their bellies, heads up, it's totally cool, the detail is amazing, made from cow bone suposetly, I'm suspecting it's really a platic mold of some kind, but for $20 I didn't argue.
I also bought a killer leather wallet for $10 and a glass pipe shaped like a Scorpion, also $10.
By then we're all shopped out, head back for more TACOS! Once again we buy 15 tacos, for $15, sooo damn good.
By then it's Jacuzzi time, I have never been so relaxed in my life, the sound of the surf, tide slowly coming in, hot water soothing me. The infinity spa had got the be one of the coolest things ever, it makes it so you look out and feel a part of the ocean, but yeah.
Tonight we go to La Fonda; this high end retaurant, it's world famous supposedly, lol, it even has it's own sign on the highway! Sooo, $30 Lobster, my mom, sister and her boyfriend, buy two plates, My dad gets a chicken pasta dish, I go for Carne Asada and Enchiladas. This place even has it's own bottled water, La Fonda water, lol. Meal starts with a black bean soup, then salad, then your main dish. When the Lobster comes, I swear I see about 10 pounds of it on the two plates, plus beans, rice and so on. I smell my Carne Asada before I see it, and it's a good 3 pounds of meat on there, with two big cheese enchiladas, rice, beans and a HUGE pile of guacamole, I'm a happy camper. Dad's chicken pasta, is the least exciting meal of the bunch. The food it awesome, I sample a bit of everyone's plate, then we all sit and enjoy our food. Now the dining patio here is a just few dozen yards from the ocean and so good food, ocean breeze, sea smell and sound, and I'm just blissed out! We go back, eat some pasteries and jelly bellys for desert and just chill out.
Monday Morning, 6:00am, once again I wake with the dawn, enjoy the morning with my cuban, coffee and the sunrise. By this point, I'm in love this this lifestyle, I can't imagine having to go home today. Get a bit bummed but I'm okay overall. Me and mom talk, make a quick breakfast and generally start to get packing. Dad wakes up and we bum around a bit talking.
Now things get interesting, suddenly my mom screams and calles for my dad.
Apparently a water pipe on the floor above us had brokend and was pouring water into the master bath, water was streaming our of light sockets, fixtures and some of the wall, it was a mess, so we rush, get maintence and generally create a huge uproar, it's crazy. Well long story short, we get cleaned up, pack the car and get on our way, while they are cleaning up the wreckage, it's a trip.
Around 9ish we hit the road, now the border crossing, from the US to Mexico is bad enough, from Mexico to the US is ABSOLUTE CHAOS!
We manage to get lost, twice, trying to get to the 5 north, highway signs in Mexico are crazy confusing!
Now the crossing itself is nuts, you sit in traffice for about and hour, and the lanes are completely chaotic, people jump all over the place, you lose lanes, and people are generally assholes all day. No only that but you have a shitload of Mexicans, walking IN THE STREET trying to sell you all kinds of random shit. It's nuts.
Not only that, but while we were trying to get to the crossing, I see this red car full of Mexicans, stop, the driver jumps out, yells something, and all the passengers jump out, the trunk opens and three little girls jump out, the all BOLT, and just bone out back to Mexico, leaving a car sitting there running. Luckily a nice man in a car near it, eventually moves the car. However that was just a crazy ass thing to see. We get the inspection place, show the guy our IDs and get waved through, while the car the next booth over looks like they might strip search it, lol what a thing to see.
Soooo, uneventful drive home, talk to a few people on the cell that finally works again, and get home, it's before 2pm, woot! take the rest of the day to rest and just chill, I have Tuesday off too, so I just clean the house and bum around the house.
SOOOO YEAH! That's it, my nice little mini vacation to Rosarito!
So here is the timeline and chain of events fo the weekend!
So on Saturday morning at what I like to call the ass crack of dawn, or around 7:00am I get the call, my parents, my sister and her boyfriend are on their way to pick me up and hit the road. Luckily I already packed and was all ready to go, or so I thought. You know how it is you always forget something!
So they get here around 7:45 or so, and I load all my shit and hit the road.
FUCK! I forgot my toiletries in the house, lol, drop my mom off at starbucks to get coffee for everyone and head back to the house. Get my shit, stop at the bank to get money for the trip and pick my mom up.
Finally on the road.
Now the drive down there is mostly uneventful, I mean besides the fact that we were driving a Toyota Highlander. Not a huge car and all five of us are big people. I mean my sister is the littliest one and she's 5'10" and 150! So me my sister and her boyfriend are stuck in the back of this car. The one saving grace, we all like the same music on a whole, and thanks to thank my parents relent and let us put on some good house, breaks and DnB the whole way!
Now it only takes about 3 hours to get down to the border crossing, and if any of you have made the trip to San Diego then I won't bore you with and details.
The border crossing though, that shit was fucking insane! As SOON as you cross over the border in to Mexico, the lines on the road, DISAPPEAR!
Now everone is driving like total maniacs and basically deciding on their own where the lines are and such, so it's a bit stressful. My dad, who is driving, is totally on edge, because he doesn't deal with stress well.
Now for those of you who havent's been to Tijuana, or anywhere south of the border. I was shocked at the TRASH, it's just everywhere, people seems to just throw it out their doors. Next is the smell, because of that trash, and the broken sewer mains, and just general filth.
Then there is the walls, Mexico's side of the border is walled by nothing more than rusty corrugated steel fencing, then ther the the "no man's land" a few hundred yards of empty space between the fences, then the US side fence, a steel and concrete monstrocity that stretches as far as the eye can see and is about 20' high. Craziness.
Now the road are still confusing as fuck, and some people seem to think that traffic too slow and it's okay to just ride in the shoulder to avoid the wait. NUTS! However we make it into and through Tijuana in one piece, find the highway to Rosarito okay and get going.
At first it's just as bad as the rest of the roads, then we start getting clear lane lines, I'm confused, until I realize that this is a Toll Road, stretching from Tijuana down to Cabo San Lucas, the 1 highway, beatiful! It's just as nice as any other 2 lane highway in the sates, because every so often you have to pay about $2.40 to drive it.
Now I still see lots of nasty little barrios with trash everywhere, but most of the area near the toll-road is pretty nice. Rosarito is about 18 miles south of the border and we get into town around 12:30 or so, we get to the condos we are going to be staying in.
Now I need to describe these condos, it's a 7 story building, with about 4 condos per floor. going price? $500,000.00 for a two bedroom two bath.
All granite flooring, huge patio, totally gorgeous. You can even drink the tap water if you want, each sink has a reverse osmoisis filtering system. Just leave it at these are probably the most high end Condos in Rosarito!
Okay, so we get there around 12:30 the first thing you see when after you park in the nice gated lot and enter the building, is a long hallway, leading out to the HUGE Infinity pool, you know the ones without an edge so it looks like you could just swim on out the ocean. With a matching Infinity Jacuzzi, huge pool deck for sunning the the like.
We go upstairs, and wait something's funny, the people who rented this place before us haven't gotten their stuff out! Lol, only in Mexico, luckily the security guard is nice enough to call them and get them to get their shit out, but we still have to wait for 2 hours while they clean the place.
So we all pile back into the card and head for Downtown!
Downtown Rosarito is a trip, absolute chaos loosly reined in by everyone just wanting to have a good time. Now we are down here in the middle of the spring break season, so there are TONS of kids running around, and 1pm drunk and stupid it's hilarious. So we park the car down near a club called Izzy's and just start walking around. There are more shops in a two block radius than I've ever seen, then there is the open air market with hawkers selling everything from Cuban Cigars to Katanas and Sunglasses to Prada knock off bags! If you like to shop, haggle and get cool random shit it's like heaven.
After that we take a walk down the beach, check out Papas and Beer, and all the other clubs, well walk by them and see a bunch of college and highschool students drunk barely after noon, lol
They rent quads and horses on the beach, so you kinda have to watch your back, because they let you take off on either without a guide, so some drunk fool on a horse for the first time could be galloping at full clip and not see you, the whole thing is crazy. The beaches are gorgeous though. On the way back to the car we stop at this awesome little Churro stand, $1 for a bag of like 6 little Churros, soo damn good!
I end up splurging on a nice Cuban cigar, $10, beautiful, and look forward to smoking it once we get back.
On the way back we stop at this huge department/grocery store, it's like a Costco on crack, but it's probably pretty high end down there. The rents get some Tequila, beers and limes, and we head back to the Condos
Soooo, after a few hours of killing time, we go back, unload the car, and get things unpacked. Mommy makes margaritas right away, and me and the Pops go down to the taco stand down the street to get fish tacos to eat.
We manage to get $15 tacs, a bottle of Tapa Tio, and container of salt for like $20 bucks, and man I gotta tell you that these were like the BEST god damn tacos I've ever eaten. I tear through my alloted 3, and manage to split the one my Mom didn't eat with my Dad, good shit.
By then I'm wiped from the trip, and just go sit on the blacony, and smoke my Cuban for bit, everyone else goes downstairs to soak in the Jacuzzi and I end up passing out for the night.
So that's just Saturday!
Sunday morning, 6:00am, sunlight streaming through the balcanoy window. Me being stuck sleeping on the couch, and becuase I've been sleeping since 6pm the day before, I'm awake and bolt upright. One of the most gorgeously semi-cloudy days is staring me in the face. I get up, go out on the balcony and light up a cig, and soak the morning ocean air in, the tide is all the way in and I can see Cormorants diving and riding the swells, it's a neat experince. I realize how much I love the ocean, and how I don't get enough of it.
Not much later, my early bird mother gets up and we make some food talk about the view and so on. Coffe, pasteries, and a cuban cigar, and no worries. I'm in heaven. We joke about how we need to win the lottery and live like this all the time. It's fun, I missed early mornings with my mom. We get breakfast going, we make a dozen eggs, bacon, and we have more pasteries for everyone.
So slowly everyone wakes up, and as usual my Dad is being an ass and doesn't want to do anything today. It's around 9:30 or so, and my mom, sister, her boyfriend and I decide to go shopping, I'm driving. Lol, the experience is a trip.
We hit several stores close to the Condos and look through all kinds of cool hand made art, furniture and so on. Everything is so cheap, if I handn't been totally broke I would have bought several cool little items.
Then we head downtown, well the far north side of town, because my sister had spotted some monkey's at a pet shop. So we stop, look for the monkeys, take some pics, and we all want to save all the dogs, and so on from their tiny cages, however we know we can't save them, so we move on.
Downtown we explore all the neat little shops, the open air market and the area in general.
Shopping down there is a trip, each little booth owner is nearly begging you to buy buy buy, now now now, good price, blah blah blah...lol
I end up getting a really killer ashtrap, it's round with a circle of skeletons all laying on their bellies, heads up, it's totally cool, the detail is amazing, made from cow bone suposetly, I'm suspecting it's really a platic mold of some kind, but for $20 I didn't argue.
I also bought a killer leather wallet for $10 and a glass pipe shaped like a Scorpion, also $10.
By then we're all shopped out, head back for more TACOS! Once again we buy 15 tacos, for $15, sooo damn good.
By then it's Jacuzzi time, I have never been so relaxed in my life, the sound of the surf, tide slowly coming in, hot water soothing me. The infinity spa had got the be one of the coolest things ever, it makes it so you look out and feel a part of the ocean, but yeah.
Tonight we go to La Fonda; this high end retaurant, it's world famous supposedly, lol, it even has it's own sign on the highway! Sooo, $30 Lobster, my mom, sister and her boyfriend, buy two plates, My dad gets a chicken pasta dish, I go for Carne Asada and Enchiladas. This place even has it's own bottled water, La Fonda water, lol. Meal starts with a black bean soup, then salad, then your main dish. When the Lobster comes, I swear I see about 10 pounds of it on the two plates, plus beans, rice and so on. I smell my Carne Asada before I see it, and it's a good 3 pounds of meat on there, with two big cheese enchiladas, rice, beans and a HUGE pile of guacamole, I'm a happy camper. Dad's chicken pasta, is the least exciting meal of the bunch. The food it awesome, I sample a bit of everyone's plate, then we all sit and enjoy our food. Now the dining patio here is a just few dozen yards from the ocean and so good food, ocean breeze, sea smell and sound, and I'm just blissed out! We go back, eat some pasteries and jelly bellys for desert and just chill out.
Monday Morning, 6:00am, once again I wake with the dawn, enjoy the morning with my cuban, coffee and the sunrise. By this point, I'm in love this this lifestyle, I can't imagine having to go home today. Get a bit bummed but I'm okay overall. Me and mom talk, make a quick breakfast and generally start to get packing. Dad wakes up and we bum around a bit talking.
Now things get interesting, suddenly my mom screams and calles for my dad.
Apparently a water pipe on the floor above us had brokend and was pouring water into the master bath, water was streaming our of light sockets, fixtures and some of the wall, it was a mess, so we rush, get maintence and generally create a huge uproar, it's crazy. Well long story short, we get cleaned up, pack the car and get on our way, while they are cleaning up the wreckage, it's a trip.
Around 9ish we hit the road, now the border crossing, from the US to Mexico is bad enough, from Mexico to the US is ABSOLUTE CHAOS!
We manage to get lost, twice, trying to get to the 5 north, highway signs in Mexico are crazy confusing!
Now the crossing itself is nuts, you sit in traffice for about and hour, and the lanes are completely chaotic, people jump all over the place, you lose lanes, and people are generally assholes all day. No only that but you have a shitload of Mexicans, walking IN THE STREET trying to sell you all kinds of random shit. It's nuts.
Not only that, but while we were trying to get to the crossing, I see this red car full of Mexicans, stop, the driver jumps out, yells something, and all the passengers jump out, the trunk opens and three little girls jump out, the all BOLT, and just bone out back to Mexico, leaving a car sitting there running. Luckily a nice man in a car near it, eventually moves the car. However that was just a crazy ass thing to see. We get the inspection place, show the guy our IDs and get waved through, while the car the next booth over looks like they might strip search it, lol what a thing to see.
Soooo, uneventful drive home, talk to a few people on the cell that finally works again, and get home, it's before 2pm, woot! take the rest of the day to rest and just chill, I have Tuesday off too, so I just clean the house and bum around the house.
SOOOO YEAH! That's it, my nice little mini vacation to Rosarito!