Mexico

Here is one of the first blog entries I ever wrote. It was first written in social networking site Bebo, way back in 2005.

I had headed over to San Francisco for long time friend Kasey's wedding. Another friend of mine had been living in Canada and so we decided to met in LA and go on a road trip to Mexico......

Ah Mexico

What can I say about Mexico…….

Crazy and we had a ball, it has just been the Labour day weekend in the US so there were no tourists around not sure if that made it better or not….

The Monday after the wedding I flew to LA to meet my friend Katie. Let me paint the picture for those who don’t know Katie……

Two girls….. (bad start already)

Who haven’t seen each other in 18 mths…..

Who both can talk as much as the other…..

Rent a convertible in LA….

Can you imagine?????

So we are in the rental car lot, we are very excited & talking a mile a minute - Katie has already started taking photos of me behind the wheel.

We head out of the lot but we didn’t realise til it was too late that we were heading out the wrong way….

“Does it really matter??? There are no cars around…… Let just quickly drive out this way“

As we drove out we realised the mistake we had made because the exit/entrance had those one-way spike/tyre slasher things. We pulled over straight away, thinking to ourselves "Thank god we got that extra insurance…."

When I went inside and told the guy behind the counter what we had done and he explained that, actually, our insurance didn’t kick in till AFTER we left the lot! After closer inspection it turns out we had just two busted tyres. Thankfully the young guy behind the counter took pity on us and only charged us $15 per tyre for repairs. With only an hour delay they gave us a new car and we set off for ‘take two’ (out the right exit).

Katie had never been to LA before so we headed downtown and did all the usual thing like Rodeo Dr, Sunset Boulevard, stars walk and Grumaldi’s Theatre, the Kodak Theatre and the Hollywood sign. What a sight we must have been driving down Rodeo Drive top down with Spice Girls blaring out the speakers, just cause we were in that sort of mood!

Later in the afternoon we headed down to the coast past Newport (The OC) and then down to San Diego. We got a room in a dive of a hotel and set out for dinner, we ended up in TGI Fridays. Were went seated long when a guy set us over a couple of cocktails. We chatted to him for a bit but nothing really came of it.

The next day, after spending most of the morning wandering around the San Diego Harbour, we set of for the Mexican border. We were both quite nervous as we had both heard a few horror stories so being two single girls in a convertible (neon sign!) we pulled into some services just near the border and even though it was pretty hot (about 30 deg/85f) we both changes into jeans and long sleeve t-shirts and put the top up.

5 minutes later we were crossing the border with no immigration and no one knowing where we were heading, it was actually quiet daunting for to Aussie who are used to immigration and custom checks at every border entering another country with no one knowing.

The beach side town of Rosarito and our hotel were only about half an hour from the border so it wasn’t long before we were checking into our hotel. After settling in we decided to check out the scene and made a pact that as we were two girls alone in Mexico it is probably a good idea to keep the alcohol consumption to a minimum.

This was the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend and so most of the tourist had gone back home it seems. The place was dead! We saw hardly any other tourists. We headed across to road to a local restaurant which had a nightclub upstairs, so we eat dinner and then went upstairs following the sound of the music... dead... not a soul up there! So we headed back to a bar which was attached to our hotel (boring we know but at least there were some locals in there).

It was soon established that as two females in Mexico we were not meant to buy our own drinks. Having a lack of male companionship the bar staff refused to let us buy our own drinks (we protested heaps, promise!) So we spent the next couple of hours drinking Mexican beer or behind the bar making our own margaritas!

At one point a non-Mexican male came into the bar and order a few beers, curiosity got the better of us so we asked where he was from, turns out he was Irish and in Mexico with a few friends having just spent the last year in Sydney, Australia. AWESOME!

We meet the rest of the bunch and joined them for a few beers, several hours later our pact went out the window as sadly both Katie and I had to be carried back to our room......

The next day after spending most of the morning sleeping off our hangovers we went for a walk around town (still dead) and ended up by the hotel pool with the ‘Irish boys (+1 pom)'. We were having a lovely afternoon & the pool side DJ was even playing my CD’s! Then our lovely peace was disrupted….

At first it was just a sighting of two ‘hot chicks’ in reception then ‘There is a whole bus load!’

Turns out it was a group of staff from an LA Outback Steakhouse, there was probably about 30 girls and 10 guys who came down and crashed our mini party by the pool. The aim of their afternoon was a pool volleyball competition but it soon became apparent that the competition was never going to be finished as a lot of people were already heavily intoxicated from the bus journey down.

A couple of girls from the group, spying ‘fresh meat’ would occasionally come over and introduce themselves to the 'Irish boys', totally ignoring Katie and I. Even when the boys would include us the introductions the girls would just ignore us. We were not impressed by this, as these girls had no idea who we were or even where we fitted in with the boys (we could have been their girlfriends!) but these girls did not give a shit.

The gang

We eventually left the revellers to it and went back to our room to rest before dinner, we had a plan to meet up with the boys and had a nice Steak and Lobster dinner in the hotels restaurant and then went back to the bar from the night before. That night was slightly tamer than the night before. We did go to check out the so called super club in town called Papa's and Beers. But even though the music was pumping there was not a soul in the place!

The next day we had to head back to LA & the boys decided to make a move too (we like to think it is because the place would be boring without us). They were heading to Vegas and the Pom with them was heading home so asked if he could get a ride with us to LA, but a couple of the other guys decided they wanted a ride in the convertible so we set off to the border with a couple of extra passengers.

5 minutes later we lost the other car and 10 mins later one of the guys announces that he must have left his passport in the other vehicle (after both Katie and I repeated asked ‘Everyone got their passports’).

Several discussions later (and as the driver and therefore putting my foot down) we braved the border crossing down a passport, I explained to the US immigrant officer what had happened and that we had managed to contact the other car by cell phone, who were not far behind us.

The officer thought the whole thing was hilariously and berated the boys for being too quick to jump in the car with two beautiful women, and sent us to the ‘secondary' inspection area to wait. This secondary area is not too pleasant as it is where you usually go when they suspect you of smuggling something illegal into the US. Heaps of border guards with guns! They weren't too happy with us being there.

One of the border guards

I don’t know what happened to the other car but it was almost an hour before they finally showed up (remember the journey from the border to the hotel on the first day only took half an hour!). Then the boys decide they should probably swap around to the correct cars to save us stopping again later. Sensible idea except I didn’t think the officers would be too happy. Sure enough one wandered over asking us what we were doing, with a shake of his head he had to change our paper work to reflect the correct amount of people in each car so we could make it out the lot.

After that we had a fairly uneventful ride back into LA although traffic proved to be a bit stressful but we made to LAX in perfect time for both our flights.

I had one night back in San Fran before getting on the plane to Sydney. Luckily had met a couple of nice people from the groom’s side at the wedding, Karin and Anton who were happy to entertain me and Karin also organised it so I could stay at her place. Karin had to go to work the next day but when her boss got in she told her about me and asked if she could go home. Her boss said yes so we spent the rest of the after shopping before Karin took me to airport.