After I spent a month in Arizona, in June 2010, I came to know that US visa holders can visit Mexican border towns without the need for US exit/entry immigration stamp. Since then I was planning to visit the nearest Mexican border town Nogales. But many of my friends cautioned me that Nogales in not safe. So my buddies and me, we did our own research and concluded that mexican town Tijuana which is bordering San Diego-CA is comparatively safer at least during broad day light.
We made our first vist on 11 July 2017. Actually the trip was impromptu one. Saturday (10th July) morning, me and my buddies, initially started planning for a trip to Las Vegas and the plan was to watch the Soccer World cup finals between Spain and Netherlands in a sportz bar in Vegas. We called Budget car rental and to our good-luck they had a compact car available which can fit 3 comfortably. The car rental guy came to our apartment for the pick up. By that time, we had our clothing packed and we were ready for the trip. We got to Budget, signed the rental and insurance agreements and were about to start. Just when I was about to put Las Vegas in the GPS, one of my buddies said, hey we have been to Vegas once already, and we have been planning to visit Tijuana for long but did not gather courage to do so because of the "Not a safe place for tourists" alert, but why don't we give it a try. Though I was very much reluctant, the other two in the car convinced me. We had to get back home to collect the passport.
We finally started from our home by 11 am. We set our destination as Yuma-AZ. We reached Yuma at around 3 pm and had a late lunch. We had our lunch at "Highway 95" cafe in Yuma, which is a Asian food restaurant.
Sadly, this placed is closed now. I tried to locate some details about when it was closed, but I couldn't. I couldn't exactly remember what I ate there. I guess it was Pad Thai Shrimp noodles. After lunch, we continued our journey. We liked the drive through I8. We reached San Diego around 6 pm. We were reluctant to cross the border during evening, that being our first trip. So we decided to spend the night in San Diego. We stayed in Extended Stay in Mission valley and paid a hefty price because it was weekend and we did not pre-book, but good that at least we had rooms available.
Next day morning we started at 9 am and checked out of the hotel. We started driving towards the Border parking space in Camino de la plaza. As we saw the sign "1A - Last USA Exit", our hearts started pumping.
I was driving slowly, so as to not to miss the exit. I steered the car slowly to the Border parking lot. Then we started walking towards the border gates. As I approached the turnstile gates, I took out my passport from the pocket and ensured that it was there.
We got into Mexico. There were guards standing with machine guns. One of the guards was checking the bags of those who were entering. When we reached the end of the border post, yellow cabs were waiting. There were at least 4 to 5 cab drivers surrounding us. We no habla espanol. Luckily the cab drivers, they do speak some engles, because of their daily encounter with tourists. We got into one of the cabs, and told that we want to watch soccer and asked him to take us to the pub street. He seemed to know when he should take us as he did not tell anything in reply. We reached the place. We hopped on to some bars. Dranked lot of Coronas and Tecates. Feasted on the authentic carne asada street tacos for which we were waiting for.
We watched the game. Since Mexico has Spanish influence and since they speak the same language, there was only support for Spain. Spain won the game. The owner of the bar readied some tequila shots. Everyone (close to 20 were in the bar that time) got a free shot and we all had the shot at the second when Spain lifted cup. We had a late lunch at a near by Cantina. I had chicken enchiladas verdes.
When we returned back to the border at about 6 pm, there was huge queue. It took nearly 1 hour for us to cross into the USA. We were asked the purpose of the visit by the Immigration officer. When I said that it was to watch the soccer finals, with a disbelief smile, he checked my passport couple of times, and said really, you came all along the way from Phoenix-AZ just to watch the soccer game that too in Tijuana. Probably he got the strong liquor smell in my breath while I spoke and I finally did admit it was for bar hopping for which as well he was not convinced. But he did let me go after grilling me with few more questions about my place of work and stay and also he did ran through my Driving license as well. But that was one-off, after this first trip, I crossed into Tijuana at least 10 times during the span of my 2 years in Arizona and always the return was a breeze with just one standard question asked - what is the purpose of your visit. Probably the system would have flagged me as frequent visitor :)
We drank a lot of water and coffee at Ihop near Camino de la plaza in order to be able to drive. We started our return journey back to Phoenix. We reach about 2 am in the midnight and crashed.
The more I visited, the more confident I became, and there was twice or thrice, I crossed into Tijuana in the middle of night and I did not feel any threat for my safety as even during midnight the place was busy.