CHECKPOINT CHARLIE
Crossing the U.S. border to get home is a lot different than entering Mexico. According to the local Chamber of Commerce, the San ysidro port of entry is home to the world's busiest land border crossing. On a good day, it takes roughly an hour to make it across the border going north. We didn't have one of those good days.
We snuck our way up through tijuana just as we had planned, but missed the final turn off for the border and got routed east toward tecate. It was almost as if baja didn't want us to leave. We spent an hour and half skimming along our country's southern border, trying to find our way back across. Using both the Jeep and Lowrance GPS to poke our way through northern tijuana, we finally stumbled upon a commerce checkpoint that turned out to be illegal to access unless we had the proper permits (we didn't). Using a very persuasive argument of "we're lost and just trying to get home," the U.S. border of-ficials let us pass after running our information and making us stay in the Jeep for 45 minutes while they verified our paperwork.
HOME AT 2:30AM
Traveling outside of the U.S. always makes us appreciate coming home again. The city of San Diego seemed like a golden metropolis compared to where we'd been. Driving on freeways that were five lanes wide felt shocking, and being able to find fuel, food, and a hotel wherever we looked seemed far too civilized. We pulled in to the first texaco gas station we found and topped off the fuel tank with a dose of ultralow- sulfur diesel. The Jeep had made it, we had made it, and it was good to be home.