Plenty of traffic on the highway has delayed our departure and even more our arrival in Los Angeles, but after 4 hours we are at the bus terminal which looks pretty poor and in a low level part of town. We take a couple of buses to get west of town since we are staying in Culver City at my friend Manuel’s place. We miss the bus stop, but we managed to be picked up somewhere at the end. Great to see my friend after so long!
For the first day we drive to the hills of Hollywood. It’s dry as hell and very hot. We take a quick look at the city from the observatory. There are very few skyscrapers, which makes the city spread very far with all the different quarters and makes it difficult (or at least very time consuming) to reach the different places with only public transportation.
It’s a nice and sunny day in San Diego, like it is more or less all the other 364 days of the year. We reach down the Gaslamp quarter to stop for some pancakes and stuffed french toast and some fresh coffee. The downtown area looks very neat and comfortable. Very few cars around, chilled atmosphere as well even if here in California it looks like nobody cares about Easter, so it’s a normal working day.
So we start our walk down to the marina where we pass the statue of the Unconditional Surrender close to the USS Midway museum.
And so we made our way to Oaxaca airport relatively early in the morning, we checked in our backpacks and went for coffee. We fly with Volaris, which has very new and comfortable planes, which was good, in particular when we discovered that the flight was a bit more than 4 hours. Mexico is really HUGE! The change of the landscape is really impressive: starting with the mountains around the Oaxaca Valley, all covered in green vegetation, after about one hour the Northern territories begin, a vast, predominantly mountainous desert on the side of the Sierra Madre, with a cactus here and there, but hardly any other greenery. As we approach Tijuana we fly along Baja California which looks really empty and dry, then some smaller canyons begin, and follow all the way to the biggest and busiest border city between Mexico and the United States. After picking up our luggage we get a bus ticket to San Diego which will bring us across the border in the easiest way. After just 20 min we arrive at the gates and are in line with other buses to be inspected for drugs, so the drivers need to open the bus’ panels, show the engine box and so on. On the side of the many lanes road there is a infinite queue of people: on one side those who can freely transit between the two countries (the fast lane) and those who need to apply for a permit (the slow lane). We are told that if we need a permit we need to get in line there.