Rosarito

Senorita, Don’t Be Afraid!

This past weekend I went down to Rosarito.  For those of you who don’t know, Rosarito is a small beach town about thirty minutes south of the U.S./Mexico border.  Rosarito is a cheap weekend getaway for southern Californians.  For many years, I would usually go down twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall.  It was the ultimate weekend warrior roadtrip.  For some reason, crossing a line in the sand changes everything.  You leave the structure of the United States and enter the land of Mexico which to me has the flavor of the wild west. 

This flavor of the wild west has drawn me down there for the last twenty five years.  When you cross that invisible line in the sand, from one instant to the next, you are thrown into a culture completely different than ours.  When you’ve grown up in suburban “Leave it to Beaverville,” crossing the border for the first time is shocking to say the least.  Besides language and cultural differences, there are other many new sensory things your brain is trying to process.  Every car seems to have a dent or a scratch in it.  There is a variety of odors one can experience from the multitude of taco shops to the nose burning raw sewage that’s leaking from somewhere and going who knows where.  The experience makes you tingle a little bit as if you’ve landed on another planet.  The sensory overload generates feeling of anxiety, joy, alertness, fear amongst others.

Once you’ve sped through all this hustle and bustle of the border and starting speeding south down the coast, the alertness and tenseness leave your body as you start to gaze out at the endless beaches with nobody on them.  Before you know it, you’ve hit the small beach town of Rosarito.  It is here you can enjoy an assortment of activities from surfing to fishing to horseback riding.  In the evening, the town is full of visiting Americans and locals going out to dinner and dancing.  You can even buy fireworks and go down to the beach to set them off.  After the border shock, a day and night in Rosarito is most enjoyable.  The slower pace down here relaxes you from the rat race that is our American society.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.  Although never lacking in its charm, the town is ghostly in appearance.  There are signs of life but not many.  Many of the bars and restaurants are closed or completely empty.  The streets are empty at night.  At eight in the evening on a Saturday night, there were only four people inside of Papas ‘n Beer, the town’s most infamous nightclub.  I remembering being here in the past when the place would be full of hundreds of revelers.  My favorite tequila bar was closed and the windows boarded up.  They used to have a two gallon clear jug sitting on the bar full of clear tequila with a two foot pickled rattlesnake inside of it.  It’s the worst rot gut you can imagine, but for some reason you gotta do just one.

From what I can gather, there are three things affecting the town.  First and foremost would be the daily news regarding the murder and mayhem by the drug cartels in Tijuana.  My wife has told me she’s never going down there again.  Secondly, you now need a passport to cross back into the United States.  I guess a lot of people don’t want to spend a hundred bucks to get a passport.  Then, of course, it’s the economy stupid.  People are watching there money and being more judicious on when and where they spend.  Spending a couple hundred dollars on the weekend with a .1% chance of being beheaded by the drug cartel is a no brainer for most people.

I look forward to the future days of peace and prosperity for our neighbors to the south.  I look forward to someday feeling comfortable taking my son and his buddies down for a beach camping trip.  I want him to get that point break to himself with his buddies instead of fighting off fifty guys for one wave .  We’ll get it done someday, but not this year.

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