Memories of Tijuana are spotty at best, and I wouldn't have it any way. Unfortunately my hard drive that contained ALL of my USA/ Mexico photos decided to off itself and is currently enduring a very lengthy and costly surgery to try and recover as much of the data as possible. Fingers crossed that I can get as much of the data back as possible otherwise my USA trip blog posts will be extremely short moving forward considering the small amount of photos I have left on my phone and instagram. In saying this, I still have half of my Tijuana photos and my photos from San Diego in the next post. So to keep myself busy and not dwelling too much on my poor hard drive I will write these two posts in the meantime. Word to the wise, BACK UP YOUR DATA TWICE!
The first night was rough. Apart from eating at the place where Caesar Salad was created (yes, it was created in Tijuana), think tequila and lots of it. Bar hopping through these amazing hipster bars that I couldn't name if I tried, street art, more tequila and dancing all night in an outdoor bar next to a pink Cadillac. We stayed in this GORGEOUS place called One Bunk, which OF COURSE I haven't got any photos of. It was on the main strip of TJ and it even had a white noise machine in the room in case it got too loud.
It was an early check out of One Bunk but we were exhausted and needed sleep so we checked into probably the worst place I have EVER stayed. We came to this place just to have a nap only to have a family arguing next door and constantly slamming the doors and a very loud Mariachi band playing just outside our window in the town square.
The only redeeming thing about this hotel was the view. We checked out of there pretty quickly and spent the rest of the day checking out the shopping.
This is a Zonkey, a donkey dressed up as a zebra (yes I know, very original name). Taking photos with these Zonkeys and their souvenir carts has been a tradition for 100's of years. This originated all from one of the first photos taken of these carts. In black and white photography the white donkey was difficult to see, so they decided to paint it with stripes so it stood out in the photo. Since then it has become a classic symbol of Tijuana. From what I could see the Zonkeys aren't mistreated. They just stand around eating and get patted.
This is El Popo Market. There are a heap of cute artisan stores, food stalls, vintage shops and anything else you could possibly want to find in a Mexican Market. I ended up scoring a $20 vintage Canon film camera!
A coffee art competition in one of the cafes in the market.
I had my first Tamale here and for some reason I have been craving one lately but I can't find anywhere in Sydney that does them! Unfortunately this is all I have for Tijuana. I was so concerned with editing the previous post, when I decided to cut the Mexico trip into seperate posts I forgot to re-upload the first chunk of Tijuana photos and now the are gone. But hopefully only for a short while. As soon as I get them back I will update this post.
After this we drove back to San Diego and spent 3 hours waiting at the border to get back into the States, which is apparently not that long.. While you are sitting in the car people come and approach your car trying to sell you random things. There are also food carts that weave in and out of the cars. We got some churros from one but they weren't the best. Some of the random things that people tried to sell us included lamps, chairs, novelty lights and toys, souvenirs (obviously) and puppies..
Ahh Mexico, you truly are one of a kind. I can't wait to come back. Thanks again to Nima, the best travel guide I could have hoped for. Endlessly grateful to you for taking me to all the amazing places on this weekend.
