Mexico

Harry’s coverage so far is a single day in Tijuana, crossed on foot from San Diego with Cameron Mofid. He says twice that he needs to come back and do the country properly.

Obs: the video carries a read-aloud DNA-testing sponsorship with no travel content. The provider is not recorded here.

Crossing on foot

• It takes five to ten minutes and a security form on a Sunday. On a weekday afternoon it can take hours.
• There is no US exit stamp, which leaves him genuinely unsure whether he can get back in.
• Tijuana’s airport sits on the border, and there is a $35 fee for the bridge that crosses into it — after which domestic flights across Mexico are cheap. Cameron’s tip for anyone in southern California.

Money and daily life

• Pharmacies are a border industry. Americans cross for medicine at roughly half the US price, and for dental work, because of what the same things cost at home.
• Tacos at 40 pesos — about $2.30 — at a touristy beach restaurant he expects to be among the pricier places in the country. Soft tacos are standard, and he prefers them.
• Mango with chilli is the street snack he expects to dislike and doesn’t.
• Taxi drivers are the surprise of the trip. Talkative, cheerful, and — in one case — an unofficial advice service; passengers tell him their problems and he tells them what he thinks. Harry contrasts it directly with the silence of an American rideshare.
• Wey is the everyday word for mate or dude.

Safety and the cartels

• The violence is between organisations, not aimed at visitors. What Harry is told, by his companion and by a taxi driver independently: cartels compete over Tijuana because it is valuable territory for moving drugs into the US, and tourists aren’t worth their attention.
• Petty crime risk is very low. Cameron’s framing, from someone who has been to 174 countries: nobody is going to hold a knife to you for a phone — the danger here is a different category from Afghanistan’s, and you have to go looking for it.
• You can find it if you look: the wrong neighbourhood, alone, filming, in good clothes.

The border itself

• Two walls with empty ground between them, and San Diego visible beyond.
• Soldiers watch it, armed and unwilling to talk on camera.
• There was a place where separated families met. People split across the border — some of whom will never be able to enter the US — could come to the fence to talk and touch hands. Harry is told this may have stopped.
• Murals run along the wall, weathered by the sea.
• What locals told him about who wants to leave: many people come to Tijuana hoping to reach America, but Tijuana is comparatively prosperous by Mexican standards and people from the city are largely happy where they are.

Source

• A Journey Across the US/Mexico Border into Tijuana 🇺🇸 🇲🇽 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2cspOu3_iQ