Day 37. PB to Tijuana and back.

The capstone to our journey, a 65 mile round trip journey to Tijuana, Mexico for lunch.  We had great weather on this Monday and multi-modal travel of cycling, ferry, walking and light rail but only about 45 miles was on our bikes. 

Starting off around 9 this morning in sunny skies. 

We didn't do our usual routine of packing up all of our panniers today because it was a round trip and we had the same place for another night. Getting out of our routine meant we forgot to fill and load our water bottles on our bikes. We realized this 2 miles down the road. Oh well, what's 4 extra miles out of 1,500?  Not much. 

 

Downtown San Diego in the morning sun from the harbor area. 

Waiting for the Coronado Island Ferry we rested and refreshed with a frosty coffee drink. 

We met Alec on the ferry to Coronado Island, a really nice guy.  28 years old and from  Manchester, England, he started his trip in Anchorage 5 months ago. He's not quite halfway through his planned journey to Argentina. We exchanged emails and blogs. I took a look at his and you might find it interesting. 

 http://www.broken-spokes.com/

And onto the bike paths and suburban streets of Coronado leading to the Silver Strand. 

On the Silver Strand we caught up to Alec on the right with his new surf board in tow and a new found cycling friend riding along his side.  Kudos to Alec, not only for making this great cross continents cycling trip but also for buying himself a surf board in SoCal to work on his surfing skills down the coast of Mexico and Central America. Good luck Alec!

🏄

Winding our way through El Chaparal Mexican border crossing at San Ysidro.  It is the busiest border crossing in the world.  We found it on a rather calm day in the new Pedwest upgrade. 

Ta daaaa!  A happy Angela celebrates the fact that we have now gone "Border to Border", Vancouver, BC to Tijuana, MX!!!  

One of the nicest border agents I ever met graciously gave us our visas and even recommended a good restaurant for us. 

 

Angela finding some ease on Avenida de la Revolucion as we've spent almost 15 minutes walking or riding our bikes in TJ and nothing bad has happened. It's actually been very interesting and exciting. 

We found a great little place off the Avenida to sit and enjoy great margaritas, a Dos Equis for me, and some delicious tacos with guacamole. Riding into Pacific Beach two days ago felt absolutely great, essentially the end of our trip. But the ride to the border and experiencing Tijuana was like icing on the cake, it made the whole trip that much more special. 

We were serenaded by two musicians, Carlo and Pablo with his accordion accompanist, both doing their renditions of "Besame Mucho" for Angela and I. We ate it up and I was singing Besame Mucho all the way back to San Diego. 


Saying good bye to Mexico as we cross back onto US territory. 

It was rush hour when we got to the Transit Center right at the border crossing but we had no trouble finding spots for ourselves and our bikes as we road the trolley back up through downtown San Diego and on to Old Town where we would get back on our bikes and ride the final 7 miles of our trip.  ☹️

As the sun sets over the Pacific we ride the last mile to our spot on the beach and to put our bikes away for awhile.  Tomorrow we will start our drive back home to Colorado, our family and friends. I'm filled with joy to be heading home tomorrow but also a little sad for the trip to be over.