Coming to America!

OK, OK, I know, its been a while since the last blog entry, and I have actually come to the end of my travels *sigh* but I owe it to you all (and my dad who is PC illiterate and will require a printed version of this blog to see what his daughter has been up to over the last few months...) to write up the last few places I visited before returning back to Blighty.

So the story continues...

San Ysidro. Situated in the Southernmost part of San Diego, California immediately north of Tijuana, Mexico, is according to Wikipedia the Worlds busiest land border crossing. 

No this isn't an NHS Hospital sign despite it resembling one

Given this big statement you would have thought that the security control here would be top notch. Alas my experience crossing here would suggest not. In fact the entire process of entering the USA from Mexico is really rather farcical. 

I guess I ought to explain my journey in a little bit more detail so as you can fully appreciate where Im coming from.

My journey began back in Baja California Sur, where I had caught a flight from La Paz direct to Tijuana. I would have caught the bus but given the flight cost the same price and was a good twenty four hours less time it really was a no brainer. 

Having marvelled at the huge fence separating Mexico and the USA which you could see from the plane (it really was that big) as we came into land. I collected my luggage and was promptly in a taxi making my way to the border.  

It wasn't difficult to spot where the border crossing was as there was a queue as long as the eye could see marking the spot. Thankfully the queue appeared to be moving quickly so it wasn't long before I reached the immigration desks. I was immediately amused by the way the Americans refer to foreigners literally as Aliens on all their signs. 

I was ushered through and immediately got "Welcome back Miss" by the official behind the desk. I thought it was odd given that my passport clearly states Im British and not American, but I chose to ignore it as was tired. Very soon I was through baggage check and standing outside waiting for my travel buddy to appear. I waited five minutes, and then another five minutes before an official came over and asked me to return inside. I had thought it was because my travel buddy had travelled through a number of Muslim states in Africa and given the Americans political attitude towards these places he would have been interrogated about his time there. I needn't have thought this as it turned out that this never even came close to happening like we had anticipated. Instead my travel buddy had been more awake than me and questioned why we hadn't had our passports stamped and paperwork issued to say we had exited Mexico and were entering the USA. Effectively we had passed through the border freely and unchecked!

That was the first border crossing of the day...

On realising the mistake the customs officials redirected us to the US visa check point, via Mexico.

After ten minutes our paperwork now in place we entered the US again.

That was the second border crossing of the day...

However this time passing through into the US we realised we had not been given an opportunity to check out of Mexico.

On asking the American border control staff what we should do their response was (and I am not kidding); "Don't worry about it, it's only Mexico".

When we responded saying we didn't want to overstay our visa and would want to return to Mexico one day, they counted with "you want to go back?". 

Seriously?! I was flabbergasted, not least because Mexico happens to be one of my favourite countries on my travels in terms of its beaches and warm sea - yes that's warm sea USA which you don't seem to have much of other than in Miami - and generally kind hearted people. I didn't dare bring up the fact that California, which we were now in, was in fact at one point part of Mexico as I knew that would just delay our crossing more...

So against the bad US border advice we crossed back to Mexico and paid our fees to exit providing the necessary paperwork and exiting Mexico on good terms - instead of "just throwing away" our visa papers like we had been told to do! In order to do this we had to pass back to Mexico again!

To recap that was the third border crossing of the day...

After one final trip we finally crossed back into the States and headed onto downtown San Diego.

Lessons learnt; an astonishing lack of border control entering the US and it's physically impossible to exit Mexico at this border without first entering the US forcing you to re-enter the States afterwards!

I must add here that each border crossing was carried out whilst lugging the dead weights that were our backpacks. To say I was exhausted by the time we reached San Diego was an understatement. Still I guess it makes for a more interesting tale : )