The Long Wait at El Border

Last Thursday, Dan and I left Ensenada just as the cruise ship Navigator of the Seas was just disgorging the thousands of bandy-legged passengers who shortly would be wandering the streets in search of one of them there cervezis. It was as if we had Ensenada to ourselves, and just when it would become crowded with noisome boat people, we were out of there.

The drive back to Tijuana was uneventful. The wait at the San Ysidro Port of Entry to the United States took about ninety minutes, which was nowhere as long as the three- and four-hour waits of which I had heard—but those were probably on weekends. Still, it was no fun waiting with multiple lines of cars idling in line while kamikaze vendors tried desperately to make a sale. The only sale they made from us was one sawbuck to use a tiny bathroom that had no lighting. I didn’t know whether I was urinating in a toilet, a bucket, or my shoes.

One of the items for sale at the border were plaster statues of Donald Trump and outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. I guess there hadn’t been sufficient time for plaster statues of Kamala Harris or Claudia Sheinbaum, the new Mexican President, to be cast.

I dropped my brother off at the lot where his truck was parked for his drive back to the Coachella Valley and hopped onto I-805 for the four-hour ride back to my apartment in West Los Angeles.