Tijuana

Mexico starts only about 30km south of San Diego and the trolley car drives from down town San Diego directly to border. We only had to walk across a bridge to be in the middle of the tourist strip. Apparently this is one of the most travelled border in the world and the difference between down town San Diego and Tijuana is most significant - they are like different worlds only kilometres apart. The 'beautiful' Tijuana river was the first thing we saw.
Along the main tourist street there were lots and lots of pharmacies advertising for cheap medicine, tablets, pills - of course viagra ;-) Also many Californians go to the dentist in Tijuana as it is much cheaper. We saw several signs pointing to a dentist. But we also found nice spots like the local markets where they were selling of course lots and lots of chilli :-) but also other herbs and spices in huge bags. I love these sort of markets.
Another thing we learnt is that the Caesar Salad and the Margarita apparently both originated in Tijuana. So of course we went to the Caesar Hotel and had a Caesar Salad freshly prepared for us at our table - yum. And yes, we also had a Margarita which was fantastic!
We saw a local tradesman selling these cactus fruit and thought great - I have to try them! So we bought a small bag and tried a bite. Some locals were watching us and had this grin on their faces. One of them spoke English and told us that we had to cook them first :-) which we then tried (unsuccessfully) in the hostel ;-)