Day 5 – Monday, January 17, 2022 (Shopping)

My wife and I planned to go out today.  GoLight offers tours (and we’ve heard that they are great), but we decided to just go on our own.  I grew up in San Diego and have been to TJ a handful of times.  We had a couple of goals for the day: buy some t-shirts and souvenirs for the kids from the shops of Revolution Ave., check out Costco just to compare it to American Costco, then go to Sam’s Club for the same reason.  We wanted to also get some candy to take home (not for us of course).

I didn’t want to carry a bunch of cash, so we set out with $100.  The UBER across town to Revolution was only about $4.  We bought some stuff and ran out of our cash pretty quick.  I checked my phone and saw that we were only about ½ a mile from Costco, so we decided to walk.  We got about 2/3 of the way there before realizing that we were walking through a pretty sketchy area and decided maybe we should find a safe place and call an UBER to come get us.  We ended up skipping Costco and going to Sam’s Club.  We quickly found that Sam’s was very similar to stores on the other side of the border.  We called another UBER and went back to the hotel.  We had not gotten any candy for the kids, so after a rest I decided to walk up to Wal-Mart again. 

(Revolution Ave. The Place for buying t-shirts and knick-knacks)

(Outdoor Market)

(Reloj Monumental, AKA "Big F---ing Clock")

The walk was a bit more difficult just because after surgery you tend to run out of energy so much faster.  The candy section at WalMart didn’t have much of anything that you can’t get in the U.S.  I looked around for some other souvenirs and wandered the store. I even used my limited Spanish to ask if they had “tourist stuff like shirts that say Mexico or Tijuana” (Hola, tiene cosas touristas, como una Camisa dice Tijuana o Mexico?).  I’m sure it was terrible, but I had spent five minutes putting that question together in my head and practicing it. I was damn proud of my Spanish at that moment.  Anyway, she knew exactly what I meant, and I understood her reply too “Aqui No” (not here).  After leaving I tried the Calimax across the street only to find that they didn’t have much either that would be exciting. 

                Walking back down the hill I was almost back to the hotel when I noticed a car broken down along the side of the street.  The street (Agua Caliente) is a very busy street and as I passed by the lady in the car yelled at me in Spanish, I didn’t understand very well, but I was excited to see that I looked enough like a local to be mistaken for one.  I did understand “AYUDE ME!” (help me) just fine.  I offered her my phone, but she asked me to help her son (I assume) push her car out of traffic.  Even though the surgery papers said don’t lift more than 15 lbs. the terror on her face made it impossible to say no.  Her son, who might have weighed 90 pounds soaking wet, got out; and together we pushed her car into the next driveway.  At this point she started to talk to me and quickly realized I was American.  I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I understood quite well what she was saying and could respond a bit.  Doctor Z. if you are reading this, I didn’t lift anything… I pushed it 😊

                Arriving back at the hotel I rested again for a while.  The delicious broth held no alure for me.  We enjoyed chatting with other folks in the hotel over WhatsAPP and ended up going down to the hot tub with a fellow patient.  We dangled our feet in the hot water and talked for about 1-1/2 hours or so.  It was super nice to have someone to talk to.  After that it was bed time.