"An Aussie in San Felipe" a San Felipe Travel Page by leonthelion

Wake up! It?s 3am and Brett is coming to pick me up for our Mexican adventures. edit: Brett?s Mexican working trip with Leon tagging along ;) 3:35 we flee the Wyatt residence and with the help of our getaway driver Teresa, we make it to Spokane International Airport. Here we exchange codewords like ?see you? and ?thanks for the lift?. Being in a state of early morning haziness, we somehow stumble onto a multiple of planes from Seattle all the way to San Diego. One of the world?s biggest zoos is what old Diego is about. But we didn?t go there, that would have been too obvious. Another fact about San Diego is that its California state borders on the south-side connect to Mexico! The blue-line trolley to the Mexico border sounded good, so at about 10-am we jumped on it and rode it towards the border. Along the way, there was a big supermarket and cheap Taco house which was too good to be refused, so we took a short detour from our border bound journey. I had 4 chicken soft tacos with the hottest sauce they had?. not hot enough for me! Back on the trolley (or tram for those of us from normal countries). Brett had his bags at his feet and I was sitting diagonally opposite him in our otherwise empty booth for 4 in the trolley. The Pakis? no,.. real cops! A big black policeman and short white policewoman entered our carriage and announced that they would be requiring to see our tickets. While Brett was trying to maneuver his backside enough to pull his ticket out of his jeans, he put his foot up against the opposite seat. The big scary looking cop told him to watch his feet. At this Brett back-chatted him, saying it was because he had to get his ticket out that he had his foot up. The cop jerked at this and came back to voice his opinion?..AT ME!! According to the copper, I, being a ?dawg?, and should have freed up enough of my personal space to allow Brett to spread out to his ticket pulling content?.what a prick!

Arriving at the Cali-Mexi border now, with a bit of feed in the belly and eager to enter into a whole new country.We get off our bright red trolley and follow the scores of other people who are crossing the border by foot. The process requires people to climb about 5 staircases and cross a bridge which spans above all the rows of traffic entering and leaving Mexico from the USA. That?s it! No immigration officers, no snooper dogs at my crotch, noone at my crotch at all! Technically, no-one knows I am in Mexico at all? I was a little disappointed. So, so far, no new stamp in my passport, what is the point of coming? Actual the reason why we are both here is that Brett is the author of the You Decide Travel Guide series, and is now making two new guides, on San Felipe and Ensenada. I?ve been helping him with promoting and designing his website and online store. In this capacity, I?m here to take more photos, voice recordings and videos of his journey to enhance and enhance that online presence.

? leon falls asleep mid-type
? leon>

Of the two target locations, we decided on San Felipe as the initial point of call. Near the border checkpoint, there was only a small bus station with one leaving for Ensenada right then. We asked them how to say "big bus station" in Espanol and hailed a cab. At the bigger bus station we booked the next bus for San Felipe, leaving in a couple of hours. Instead of waiting patiently, I could feel my urine was not at its full potential just sitting in my bladder, so I PAID a guy to let me into some dirty SANITARIOS and set it free. Even with that out of the way, we still had a lot of time to sit and admire the local talent and chat about the local soap operas on TV. At 2:30, we got onto our $35 bus. I was surprised at how nice it was, better than most tour buses back home (home at the time of writing is a bit uncertain, but we'll say Australia). For $35, this would take us the LONG way down to San Felipe, via a few small towns and larger Mexicani on the way.

The scenery out the bus window as amazing. I'm someone who loves to see the ordinary things in a different country, and just the normal houses, vistas and nature were different enough to impress me. Most of all, I was in awe as we drove high up in the rocky mountains... simply stunning. Huge mountains of red-brown rocks, dropping down to desert which stretched as far as the blue,pink and purple horizon.. with the moon coming out early as a back drop. I've never seen this kind of scenery before and it was so beautiful. A little interesting, maybe a little sad and disturbing though, was the amount of crashed cars we saw fallen down the sides of the mountain roads we were driving on. Not just a few, but literally hundreds of cars and trucks had apparently made mistakes on the road and rolled 20-50metres down to their fate. We were kinda hoping it might just be people dumping unused cars, but that they all had fallen right on corners, there was probably a more sombre reason. I hope our bus driver is well-trained!

We took some footage along the way, are going to put together a travel video to sell on the site too. For recording notes along the way, we were hoping to use a new iPod with a mic, which would also allow us to see scratch videos we edit on the laptops. Bummer news was that the current iPods (5th Generation) don't have any compatible microphones releases yet. Today, we used the video cam to take notes with voice and video, tomorrow, we may try to use my PowerBook with the iSight as an audio input device....see how that goes.

Fast forward the rest of the bus trip's sleeping and Seinfeld-esque nonsense conversations. We arrived at San Felipe about 8 or 8:30-pm. Snobbing the taxis waiting for us, we decided to take a shortcut through the partially-lit desert and find our hotel for the night. Halfway down some skanky roads and sandy desert, we started to hear some small explosions.... though that brought on the immediate need for number 2's, I just stopped for a quick number 1 and my feet were moving again before the last drop splashed in Roberto Rodriquez style slow motion on the desert floor. Made it to the hotel strip near the sea and did a quick reconnaissance of the area. Using Brett's local knowledge, we booked into a fairly nice hotel which got us a twin room for $55 (with $20 deposit for the remote control :P ).

No time for a shower or shave, we went out to get a restaurant review we had planned for the Chinese restaurant. Charlie Chows (I may have made up the name due to memory deficiencies) was closed however, so we now bring you "Ted's Place - Pizza Shop" review, as..err...planned. You'll hear about the pizza joint when you grab the video or book from www.youdecidetravelguide.com I'll let you know that it's safe to eat and drink there though, no Mexico stomach yet d(^.^)b

Being a long long day, it wouldn't have been right not to stop for a drink on the way home. Ted, or, as he is better known as, Pablo, from the pizza place recommended a place across the road for a drink or two. We flashed our non-matching passports at the door and went into what turned out to be one of the saddest strip clubs I've ever seen.... of only the.. 2... that I have been to ( I promise Hiromi ;) . Not sure which was worse, the beer or the girls on stage. Actually, the beer still had alcohol in it, so I'm gonna call it the winner! We quickly downed the booze and then came back to this hotel, The Hotel Don Zeus, I think, to get rested before another long day tomorrow.

Buenos Noches

El Leon