San Diego, USA

I crossed the border between Mexico and the USA eight times within one week, four times from Tijuana to San Diego and four times back. San Diego is a fascinating booming city with moderate climate all over the year and the most beautiful town in the USA I've seen so far (not only on this trip). In the following I'll explain why I crossed the border to San Diego four times.

The first crossing was for renewing my tourist VISA for Mexico which was valid for six months. I crossed over with Jin in the night and after I was given a new stamp by Homeland Security in my passport, which took a while, we were able to continue our journey. Jin drove me around a little bit in his car and we visited Balboa park, San Diego's main park. Next to a lot of trees and flowers the park is home to a range of museums and there are also small cultural houses of many countries in the world. These so-called "House of Pacific Relations International Cottages" were originally built for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition, currently they house 33 groups supporting educational and cultural programs. Afterwards we made a short stop at the famous "Greetings from San Diego sign" before we went to Jin's house in North Park, a beautiful neighbourhood.

The next day we met up with Jason and had breakfast together in a Filipino restaurant. After that Jason gave me a small tour in his convertible yellow racing car, repaired from the scrap yard. He dropped me off in downtown San Diego and I continued my city exploration walking. An impressive characteristic is the proximity of San Diego International Airport to the city centre. From almost any point you can always see the airplanes coming down and sometimes you may think that the next one will land directly next to you.

After strolling around for a few hours in the districts Harborview and Little Italy I noticed that my GoPro was missing. I apparently lost it, or it was stolen. The rest of the afternoon I spent rethinking my walking tour and all the spots I had stopped but after searching for a few hours for it and asking around in some offices I finally gave up. What is even more unfortunate than the loss of the GoPro itself is the loss of the microSD card with numerous photos and even more videos of the last weeks, at sea with Brian and up to San Diego. Regrettably, I could not transfer and save them beforehand because all storage media were full. But the ironic thing about the whole story is that I didn't lose a very important item within half a year's stay in Mexico and hardly have I spent a day in the USA, something like this happens.

Later in the afternoon I was picked up by Robbie and Oscar who showed me a little bit more around the city. We went across the Coronado Bridge to Coronado Island, a peninsula which is not only home to a part of the naval base but also to the wealthiest people living in San Diego. There are luxury villas in a row, only a small park allows the access to North San Diego Bay and therefore a viewpoint to the mainland.

We didn't go back via the Coronado Bridge but went all the way down the headland to Imperial Beach, a small city which forms part of the metropolitan region of San Diego. There we had a pizza in the famous Pizzería Luigi and met up with captain Brian who lives just a few blocks away.

The second crossing to the States went off without a hitch. Our goal for the day was this time to hand over the three puppies Pepper, Dobbie and Goldie to their new owners. Robbie and Oscar had worked hard to reach that day when the little ones will get a new and safe home. Feeding and bathing them, take them to the hairdresser, giving them medicine and do all the work which is also connected with raising dogs. This day was the first time for the puppies to be in a dog park. It was an impressive new experience for them as they came in contact with so many other dogs but they handled it quite well. After we had handed over the dogs and their papers we continued our journey with an empty trunk.

Before returning to Tijuana we visited the Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial, a monument located in the north of San Diego on a hill which offers great views over the city and its surroundings. It is considered one of the most unique veteran monuments as it honors all kinds of veterans, from the revolutionary war to the current war on terrorism, with an image of the veteran.

Even though we tried to keep the expenses for food going in San Diego within limits, we still tasted some typical American dishes. The first place we went to was Phil's BBQ, a BBQ restaurant well known among people from San Diego, which has branches in two locations in the city. Another dining room we visited was BJ's, a more widespread American chain of restaurants with over 200 restaurants all over the country, some of which contain microbreweries. As we went there on a Tuesday it was Pizookie Tuesday, a special offer where they give away their self-creation Pizookie, which is ice cream served on a caramelized warm biscuit cake, at half price.

The third crossing to San Diego was for doing some grocery shopping as some Food & Beverages are much cheaper to get in the States, others in Mexico. Furthermore Oscar and I did some electronics shopping. I bought a new GoPro as we found a good deal and additionally some more memory cards to be able to buffer more photos and videos before uploading them into my cloud. As Oscar was inspired by my drone he was looking for second-hand offers on the internet and we met spontaneously with a guy who sold Oscar my drone's little brother, the DJI Spark. Since I still had a five dollar bill in my wallet, which I had carried around with me since my stay in New York more than half a year ago, I found it time to spend it and allowed myself a salad of it. I haven't had salad for a long time, because Mexican cuisine is really not known for its salads.

The fourth crossing turned out to be a little more elaborate as we were pulled into secondary revision by CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection). As a result, in addition to the usual waiting time of one hour in traffic, we were transported to a separate inspection and interrogation location where we spent an additional hour. As we finally found out, I was to blame for it, because the border authority found it remarkable that a German crosses the border so often within a short time. Both I and Robbie and Oscar were separately asked a lot of questions by some officers as they wanted to figure out if I'm doing illegal work. All in all, the interview was harmless, but so annoying that I decided not to enter the USA so quickly anymore.

The actual goal of our border crossing this time was to get pregnant woman's clothes for Robbie as she's expecting a baby and Oscar wanted to fly his drone. Whilst Robbie was really successful finding a bunch of clothes very fast, Oscar and me had to find out that almost the whole area of San Diego is a no-fly zone for drones. I had already suspected something like this, due to the nearby airport and the high amount of military and naval stations that are spread all over the city. My drone was so intelligent to show me in advance that taking off is not possible within this area, Oscar's drone unfortunately realized this only in the air. At this point of time he had already flown out a dozen meters from the pier over the harbour and so he was shocked and tried everything to get it back immediately when the drone tried to lower itself to land on the water. Luckily he made it although the drone was out of his control for a few seconds and navigated randomly.

As we couldn't fly our drones we therefore wanted to take some electrical scooters, which you can find all over the city, and drive around for a while. Unfortunately that didn't work either, so after a while we decided to stop trying to unlock the scooters. As we found out afterwards, however, this was because I had received a confirmation mail sent to me, which I had to accept first. So in the end, we just walked around a little on foot.

Talking to the friendly driver of a tourist carriage we were given the recomendation to take the lift up the Hyatt hotel to get a great overview over this part of the port. So we did and thanks to this tip we almost got to see with our own eyes the view a drone would have had in the air.