I wonder if anyone is going to believe what happened to us yesterday…I’m not sure I do! It started calm; I got up, showered, took a little walk in the sun by myself listening to my ipod. Came back and took our car in to a local garage in Tijuana to exploit (in true American style) the cheap labour across the border. Everyone brings their car over here to be fixed and every other shop seems to be a garage. I now almost have a degree in car engineering: almost everything has gone wrong with our car and so I have had to learn about every single part of it. We’ve had to sort out transmission leaks, new tyres, break pads, spark plugs, exhaughst leaks and a million other things. What makes everything more interesting is that all our interactions have to be conducted in Spanish and I’m the only person who speaks any on the trip – but I’m also the only girl! Car mechanics seem to intuitively talk past girls to guys on engine matters, locking eye contact with the boys even when they know fuck all more than I do! However, things get a bit amusing when they have to talk to me because no one else knows what they are going on about…mwahahaha the power!

Anyhow, we spent all day sitting in garages, trapsing about in the heat and encountering one car problem after another. In the evening, we decided that after doing 4 days of doing nothing but car stuff we wanted a break. We decided to investigate the bars in downtown Tijuana. However, driving down there, we accidently got on to a one way road to the US – DOH! So we’re stuck in this huge traffic jam about to cross one of the most notorious borders in the world in a car that we’re not entirely sure is legitimate. What made things worse is that the car works ok when it picks up speed but at a slow pace it stalls like hell. So we’re jerking towards the border simultaneously having hysterics and getting incredibly stressed and just as it was our turn to get to the counter our driver, Figgis, lost his passport and the car stalled! We chugged over to the police officer who luckily just kind of grinned and waved for us to go on. Just as we were *exactly* on the borderline though the car completely broke down and we had to push the car in to the US! What’re the chances of it stalling precisely there?!

By some kind of miracle we managed to get the car started again and drove down the US motorway, stopping at some dirty KFC to laugh/cry at our experience. By the time we came out we knew we’d be driving in the dark which is always a bit dodge – we kept going the wrong way down all these interlocking highways and before we knew it there were these red and blue flashing lights behind us – the police were asking us to pull over. We’d read in the guidebooks that we had to be as wary of the police as the bandits in Mexico – the guide had all these case studies of police officers planting drugs in vehicles, asking for bribes etc. We were shitting it as the police officer walked over to our vehicle. Of course this guy didn’t speak any english either but he managed to convey that we were going the wrong way down a one way street and then proceeded to ask all these interrogating questions in a quite aggressive manner. I tried to play ’sweet innocent super cooperative girl’ but he got us all out of the car anyway and began to search everything. Felt so helpless – we probably hadn’t even gone the wrong way down the street but we couldn’t really argue! I thought, it’s ok, we’ll probably be able to bribe this guy, but then a whole other van load of them pulled up and we were surrounded by cops. Everyone was searched and the officer took a particular dislike to Jon and groped him literally everywhere! Jon has a great sense of humour though: ‘What?! Does he think it’s possible to smuggle heroin in my bell end?!’ Then things took a sudden turn for the worse; the officers were searching our vehicle, bags etc. and in the ash tray built in to the car they found about half a joint’s worth of cannabis that must have been left there by the previous owners. AAAAH! The Mexican police are notorious for coming down really heavily on gringos with draw because the US come down heavily on the Mexican authorities for drug smuggling across the border. The cannabis they found REALLY wasn’t ours and I tried to explain that we’d only bought the car the day before. He replied that adding the cannabis charges to going the wrong way down a one way street gave us two choices: pay $300, or spend 36 hours in a Mexican jail. Once again, AAAAAH! All these images of Mexican jails start running through our heads. Paul started getting angry and I was really worried that he might do something stupid. I kept saying, ‘Isn’t there another way?’ not wanting to openly offer a bribe but wanting to get the option on the table. It didn’t seem like there was a third way. Paul started talking about the British consulate and the officers didn’t like that. On top of that, I was trying to flirt with these officers in the sweetest possible way – the car mechanic had told us earlier that the best option in such situations is to be as calm and cheerful as possible. So I talked to the particularly evil cop with little man syndrome about how much we loved Mexico, it’s culture, it’s oh-so-friendly people etc. I asked him if he had kids and made a big fuss when he said he didn’t; ‘But Sir why ever not?! You are so beautiful you must have thousands of children!’ – I even pinched him on his greasy cheek. The officers pointed to the guys in the car and asked me which one was my boyfriend – I said that none of them were because they were all so butt ugly. The officers laughed – particularly because the British guys didn’t have a clue what was being said. In the end, they let us off – I think we were too poor and the threat of the Consulate got them. They’d had their fun and exerted power over Westerners that constantly made thenm feel inferior. As they drove off, we sat in the car parked by the curb shaking from the adrenaline and laughing…