Our border crossing was at Tecate, just east of San Diego. The crossings at Tijuana are notoriously stressful- we know from first-hand experience, after living in San Diego for four years. (the Tijuana crossing is the busiest border crossing in the world)

Even though we'd been to Tecate before, we didn't know what to expect. It was my first time in Mexico on a motorcycle, and we were planning on going deep into the country.

We expect we'd stop in Ensenada for the night. We needed to do some immigration paperwork there anyhow. As it turns out, the San Felipe 250 was moved to Ensenada at the last minute, so hundreds of racing teams relocated. That meant the cheapest hotel we found was almost $100! No way. We ended up driving towards San Felipe, staying in Ojos Negros for $17.