It’s time to kick off this Mexican travelogue with a look at how I got across the border in the first place. None of my flights ever touched the United States. Instead, I decided to go down to San Diego and use Cross Border Xpress (CBX) to walk across into Tijuana and fly domestically from there.
- Introduction to Cranky’s Mexican Adventure
- Cross Border Express is Great, But It Can Be Tricky
- Viva Kicks the Trip Off the Right Way
- Mexicana is Weird, But the E2 is a Delight
- The Spectacular But Distant AIFA Airport
- Mexico City is More Than Worth the Visit
- Aeromexico Does It Right in the Air but Not on the Ground
- Señor Air Has the Best Name and an Experience to Match
- Los Cabos and La Paz Couldn’t Be More Different
- TAR Was a Wild Ride
- Volaris, the Purest ULCC
My parents were in town visiting, and they were miraculously heading to San Diego. So they graciously decided to get up early and drive me down to CBX. With my flight leaving at 10:45am, I wanted to get there two hours earlier since I didn’t know what to expect. That meant leaving at 6:45am for the two hour drive.
We pulled into the CBX terminal area at about 9am. There is a ton of construction going on around CBX with new light industrial buildings and a whole economy growing up around the airport. I imagine that the airport and CBX are the catalyst for this. CBX has a surprising number of parking lots, but they are all expensive. That was my biggest complaint about the entire experience.
I saw nothing less than $20 when booked in advance. Street parking can’t be reserved in advance, but it’s still $15 a day. For the 10 days I’d be gone, this wouldn’t make any sense. Besides, I drive a Hyundai and they say to not leave Kias and Hyundais there since people steal those more often.
The terminal itself is small, and there is a tiny check-in area for each of the Mexican airlines on the US side, and I guess that’s to print boarding passes, make changes, etc. You don’t check bags until later.
I didn’t need that, so I went toward the middle where there was an electronic gate.
Here I had to scan my CBX ticket followed by my boarding pass. The airlines will sell you tickets that include the CBX fee, but I found that was more expensive than just booking direct with CBX. I couldn’t find any benefit to booking through the airline other than the slight additional convenience of it all. Pass.
After clearing that electronic gate, I walked into a room that looks like it’s used for some sort of US security, but it’s empty and doesn’t seem to have been used in some time. I just kept walking up an escalator to the bridge. This is the best view I could get looking out at the border fence, because the rest of the windows on the bridge are frosted.
As you can tell, it was a bit of a walk over the border, but when I got there… there was a selfie spot clearly marked. Naturally, I obliged.
After crossing over the fence, I finally got over to the CBX checkpoint on the Mexican side where they make sure you have everything you need. I pulled out my CBX ticket, my boarding pass, and more. This is considered a land crossing, so it’s different than a flight. And since I would be staying for more than a week, I needed to fill out the LMM form and then pay about $50. This was a pain, but I got it done in advance.
I walked up and showed them my passport, my form, and then the receipt for payment. But the woman there told me that this was the wrong receipt. At least I think that’s what she said, because this was a Spanish-only conversation, and despite speaking Spanish decently, I didn’t know all of the words she was using. She told me to go look in my phone for a different receipt. We couldn’t find it. Then another guy came up, and he eventually found it. But of course, it has to be printed.
So, the woman told me to email an address, and then she could print it. I did that, but it wasn’t showing up in her email… and that’s when she realized that the internet was down on that computer and it couldn’t be fixed. So she want to another computer, but that wasn’t connected to the printer. Finally, she had me email it to another person who was in an admin office, and she printed it out for me. That was ridiculous, but kudos to those people for going above and beyond to help. The customer service was excellent.
With that out of the way, I went through Mexican immigration. I found it all very confusing. I went to the first person who called me, he looked through everything, then took me over to a different agent who… did something? I then passed through and had to put my bags through the x-ray for customs scanning.
Finally, I was on the other side.
This is where I would have checked bags if I had any, but instead I went straight to the very grand and very empty security line. Having finally passed through about half an hour after I started the whole thing, I could take a minute and breathe. That was a lot, but it really would have been pretty simple if I had printed out the right receipt. It just requires a fair bit of prep work for your first time through.
Now I was in the Tijuana airport, and I was ready to get going, but I had some time to kill. That, of course, will be covered in the next post when I finally take to the skies on my first airline of the trip, Viva.
As a side note, my return at the end of the trip into the US was a very similar process, just in reverse. I would absolutely feel comfortable arriving 1.5 hours before departure instead of 2 and possibly less than that.
