Border madness
So finally leaving San Clemente after Roger took us for breakfast. We loaded up the bikes and went over to Roger’s company. I blagged a fuel canister. Then we were off. Quick ride down to freeway to San Diego. We tried to find a bike shop but on the address I got of the internet there was no bike shop. We were running out of time so we continued on to the border and the mayhem started.
6 Lanes of traffic. Nothing on the American side. No booth, no customs building. Nothing. So we stopped at the Mexican area for declaring goods, because hey we had to declare our bikes. The woman we talked to said no that’s not done here and she told us were we had to go. Then we asked were we could get rid of our US immigration cards and she said “not here”. We figured that since we were already in Mexico. She points to the US side and says we probably could do it there. This was the other side of I-5 going into the US and the queue of cars was mad. Hm, what to do.
Well, managed to slip thru a gate so at least we didn’t start at the end of the queue. After some filtering between the cars we arrived at the inspection booth. I was first and tried to explain what had to happen. Seamed he didn’t really know but said we should stop at this booth on our way into Mexico. Since the booth was about 10 yards away I asked if it was ok to pull up there to have a talk to the lady there. Border guard said yep so parked the bike, walked over to the booth and the woman asked me if there was a reason for me to stand there. Sure there was - get rid of the stupid immigration card and let customs now that the bike was leaving the country. Puzzled look. Tried to explain again that we were actually going into Mexico and were not returning to the US anytime soon. I think pure boredom made her take the immigration card from us and the bike document that had the customs stamp on it. We asked if we could drive our bikes around this corner to the gap in the fence. No because we would have gone against traffic for about 3 yards. Much better to let us into the US without documentation that we were there. So anyway up to the next freeway exit, swing back and on towards Mexico.
Did not stop at the border. Drove straight thru. We managed to find the place were we had to get our immigration card and vehicle permit for Mexico. We got the documents needed. Pretty straight forward process. I rang Javier that we would be 30 min late.
We drove the 15 miles to Rosarito and met Javier at the Walmart. Javier is a friend of Roger and let us stay in his beach house. Got there and Edgar, a friend of Javier, had the BBQ going. We got beer and tacos, chatted and watched some Baja racing DVDs. Having some time to reflect on the whole border experience David and myself agreed that the Russians make these guys look like amateurs. What a circus, considering that its the most protected border in the world. Ok the amount of people crossing the border who are not American or Mexican is probably very low but for the border guards to have no clue at all what to do is messed up.
Day 181
12. October 2009
Start: San Clemente, USA
End: Rosarito, Mexico
Miles today: 126
Miles total: 17846
Odometer: 741
Bike Dropped: 5
Speeding Tickets: 1
Out of suncream by the looks of it