Seeking Sanctuary preview 5 - Becoming Gringos

The dawn’s dim light revealed storm clouds to the south, moving rapidly over the Sea of Cortes and up the Colorado River. The monsoon would soon overtake them. Natasha and Kermit grabbed some quick pancakes with bacon and eggs at the next-door coffee shop.

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Crossing into California, the California border station waved them through without even asking if they had stolen cactus plants aboard.

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Tecate was not as Edgar remembered it from forty years ago. Originally, he had approached it from the west. From the east, in 2003 there were no signs. The AAA map showed it. He forgot to turn off at Boulevard. He stupidly thought there was a turnoff from the main highway. They had to backtrack 11 miles to Boulevard.

Once on the old highway, Natasha had to squat in the bushes to pee near a large old barn. When she had to pee, she had to pee. She could not get up when she finished. People drove by looking at her bare ass. Edgar took another wrong turn at a new Y in the road--this time for a mile.

Once on the right road, they yawed and pitched through farming country on a narrow two-lane road. Natasha could not believe that Tecate existed.

Edgar had chosen Tecate as a border crossing because he remembered it as almost non-existent. He hoped it would have fewer facilities and staff to search their car and run license plate scanning, and no facial recognition gear.

A simple T intersection bore a Tecate Border Crossing sign. About one hundred yards to the border, a Payless store, and parking lot, looked out over the border crossing.

They crossed in the lane for those vehicles with nothing to claim and then pulled over to ask a border guard what to do. He said they could park where they were, but they would have to walk back to Inmigración. The border guards said they would be happy to watch their kitty cat, but were much more interested in watching the skirts walking by.

The Immigration officer helped them fill out the forms. Neither of them could read well without their glasses, and Natasha had been born with a Ukrainian name, which later had been Americanized. The officer sent them across the street the Banco Bital. There we waited an extraordinary time while four braceros cashed their paychecks. There was no air conditioning and it was hot. Natasha went to the car twice to check on the kitty cat. Edgar watched as she made her way across the border traffic and back.

Finally, after paying eighty dollars for two six-month visitor permits, they returned to the official’s office, which was air-conditioned. He never indicated that they needed to pay a bond for the car, as Edgar and Natasha feared, but they had concern that they would have to pay again in six months, they would be stuck--they would insist on paying with a credit card and their credit would be ruined by then.

The guards indicated that with so many cosas, and chingararas, they should not try the mountain road and would have to travel through part of Tijuana.

The first thing they noticed upon crossing the border was that the streets were suddenly rough on the worn tires and suspension system. Drivers cut crazily in front of them.

The second thing they noticed was that there were few directions. Not knowing where to go, they drove to a city park within sight of the border--small and old, with a scattering of historical buggies and trees.

They missed the first right turn marked ‘ENSENADA.’ The second such turn condemned them to repeated merges from diagonal streets across oncoming traffic, with limited visibility of merging traffic coming from behind.

Leaving Tecate, the road wound through depressed areas. Natasha wanted to stop for a margarita, but all of the cafes were on the other side of the street.

Soon, they approached the Tijuana Airport and the signs became more confusing.

Edgar took a wrong turn and asked for directions. The directions were little help. He drove north to the first stoplight and turned right when it felt good. He was about to turn north again, when he realized that somehow the sun was now coming from the passenger side. Tijuana drivers maneuvered like creatures in a video game. All Edgar could do, with Natasha shouting, was try to avoid a collision.

Signs appeared overhead indicating that we were Ensenada bound. The highway cut through hills that were steeper than those in San Francisco, if not has high. Houses of ticky-tacky hung on cliff sides, awaiting the next earthquake. The road led out into the countryside. After several minutes, it broke out on the ocean. Natasha expressed relief at having left the blinding heat of Phoenix behind and at having reached the Pacific sea breezes.

Of course, on this desolate highway, Natasha had to pee. They stopped at a turnout near Mal Paso. Bathhouses and toilets clustered by the highway. She forgot to take the roll of emergency toilet paper. A Mexican man passed her a wad of toilet paper through the door for a quarter dollar.

Rosarito Beach bore an unpleasant resemblance, on a small scale, to Laughlin, Nevada, or Miami Beach. Tall, if somewhat scattered. Hotels lined the shoreline catering to moneyed people who enjoyed driving through Tijuana to reach a Mexican Hotel.

Past Rosarito Beach, they found themselves driving the toll road. This road offered beautiful seascape panoramas, a la Big Sur. Attractive decorative plantings lined the roadside. The view was spectacular up and down the coast of cliffs similar to those found in Big Sur and Northern California.

Ensenada had changed since Edgar’s visits in the sixties. Where, he remembered coming around a red rock hill and suddenly seeing the city spread out before him and the triangular port docks below; nowadays the road came into town near sea level. Since the Chapultepec Hills were to the inland side of the road, he missed Cicese Research Center. The road just ran right into the city. Ensenada drivers appeared to drive somewhat better than Tijuana drivers. Ensenada had grown. Actually, the municipality population had exploded, but the largest municipality in Latin America still could only claim Ensenada as a sizeable city.

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The only way to describe driving in Ensenada is to imagine that you are a tiny microbe riding on an electron flying around an atom of uranium. The multitude of electrons are whizzing by so fast that all you can do is hold on tight to the electron that you are riding and hope that basic laws of physics hold and there is no collision.

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Hotel prices were higher than they expected. Most were over thirty-five dollars.

They pulled into a gas station to ask directions to a cheap hotel that would allow cats. As Edgar turned off the ignition, he remembered that he had not secured the car top carrier since Tecate. He had requested Natasha not to let him forget. He had opened it in Tecate, at the border, to get their papers. He had only locked one front side lock.

Experience had shown that any high speed driving could balloon out the carrier and cause it to spill items down the road.

Edgar had only driven fast on the toll road and the carrier was pretty firmly packed. The lock had held and they would never attribute any important missing article to having spilled out.

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PEMEX station attendants suggested that the Jade Motel would be reasonable and might not make to big of a fuss over the cat. Actually, Mexican Federal Law prohibited pets in hotel and motel rooms, so owners had no latitude in this regard.

A friendly PEMEX customer offered to lead them to what he thought was a cheap and accommodating hotel nearby. He led them out of the gas station over a concrete ridge, which banged the Hell out of their low-slung compact. The car got stuck. It groaned and “thamp-thamp-thamped.” It sounded like the drive shaft was spinning on the concrete, but this car was a front wheel-drive vehicle. The hotel turned out to be expensive. Edgar checked for fluid leaks under the car and found none. Never-the-less, the car had trouble starting from then on. Edgar thought it was the low battery on the key chain remote anti-theft transmitter.

They found El Jugador Motel. Though plain looking, in its day it mimicked a Las Vegas Motel.

An omen that all was not well, surfaced when Edgar met a young Mexican man in the parking lot named Bromista Satánico. Brom said he was going to study movie direction at La Universidad de Guadalajara, in Jalisco. He said his email address was ejodeldiablo@hotmail.com.

Edgar and Natasha smuggled Kermit into the room and went out for dinner. Natasha did not want Chinese and darkness had already fallen. They passed up a restaurant-bar that served the equivalent of Mexican Buffalo wings. Finally, they found a small restaurant in a mini shopping center where everyone was very friendly and polite. Edgar had a dish of plain quesadillas and Natasha had chile rellenos. The cheap food was not that flavorful. Their beer was served in foam cups. They did not get sick.

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Back at El Jugador, the man in the business office gave them directions to Michaels’, in El Rincon. The man said that Michaels Martins was about a most reliable and honest person and a 1-hour drive from the El Jugador.

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After a breakfast of huevos rancheros at the hotel, Edgar and Natasha set out to find a new home. Many Ensenada streets were not signed and others were discontinuous. Natasha began yelling at Edgar and hitting him. Edgar did not care that the government did not approve of a man hitting a woman. Knowing from long experience that he could not talk her out of hitting him, he hit her back until she stopped hitting him.

They rolled through a fertile valley.

At the town of Soleado, Edgar almost followed the highway, straight into the dirt alley of ‘La Segunda Sabados’ (The Saturday Flea Market).

Just after the flea market, they found the turnoff to Machado. The road led out into the country past more agricultural fields and then started swaying back and forth, as it crossed the east edge of Estero Indio and turned west along the south edge, heading towards Machado.

Nothing much looked promising.

They came to an extended fish camp. Poblado Francisco Juarez had a lumberyard, a laundromat, and an internet café.

All along the road were strategically placed topes, or speed bumps, to slow vehicular traffic.

The road straightened up and was lined with stalls on the south side where corn, fruit, and honey were sold. A tope ensured that vehicles slowed down enough to consider stopping to buy. Which came first--the tope or the stands? Most likely, the chicken!