A couple of months earlier, it took me 15 hours to go from Hermosillo to Mexicali. This time around, I planned to go from Guaymas to Tijuana. Not only was I starting the trip further south of Hermosillo, but I was also aiming to go further west of Mexicali.
The good news of the day was that the seat next to me was empty. At least for the time being, I did not need to have my guitar in-between my legs. I was excited to go to Tijuana. I spent 11 and a half years of my life in San Diego, California. For that reason, Tijuana wasn’t any random city for me. It had been a while that I had the idea to visit Tijuana to pay tribute to the time I spent and the memories I had in Southern California.
No need to say that the route I was going to take was notorious for international drug trafficking. Therefore I knew in advance that it was going to be full of checkpoints.
First Checkpoint
After making two stops in Hermosillo, we continued our trip up north. I knew from my previous trip that the first checkpoint would be coming up soon after leaving Hermosillo. I wasn’t mistaken. After we’d passed Sonora’s capital, the bus stopped at a military checkpoint. This time around, I wasn’t taken apart inside the bus by the military, as was the case during my first trip up north. I got out of the bus with all the other passengers.
A black Brazilian guy was sitting a couple of rows from my seat during the ride. He did not seem to speak any Spanish at all. However, the soldiers were nice to him. While waiting in the queue, they tried to initiate a conversation with him, talking about famous Brazilian soccer players. For some reason, I ended up being the last person waiting to pass the scanner check.
I had the bad feeling that my inspection would not go as smoothly as for the other passengers. I thought they weren’t going to pick on the black Brazilian guy since it would be too easy and could be perceived as overtly racist. For that reason, I was expecting that the special treatment was going to be for me.
When it was my time to pass the scanner, one of the soldiers wanted me to take everything out of my pockets. After passing his hands over my clothes to make sure that I did not have any weapons on me, a group of four soldiers wanted to inspect my guitar. Very respectfully, they opened the sleeve case to look inside the case and the instrument. They asked me how much the guitar cost. Then they asked me if I was a foreigner. I said yes. They wanted to see my passport and my immigration form with the entry stamp. The current date was March 2nd, 2021. I had made it to Mexico from Uruguay on September 25th, 2020, with a 180-day visa. With February being only 28 days long this year, my Mexican visa was valid until March 23th.
One of the soldiers checking my passport started to count the months from September with his fingers. He seemed to have a difficult time doing the math. He first thought I was out of status. I had to do the math myself, counting aloud to convince the little military crowd circling me. I was able to convince them all that I had few more weeks left on my visa. After getting the OK from the military, I went back inside the bus.
Second Check Point
Soon after the first checkpoint, I was expecting a second checkpoint. That was the sequence on my first trip to Mexicali two months earlier. I kept wondering since my last trip why there were two checkpoints so close to each other. What intrigued me the most was that I couldn’t tell what kind of authority was in charge at the second checkpoint. I assumed that it was probably some inner customs between different Mexican states.
On this occasion, three men and a woman entered the bus. They were wearing face masks. It seemed like the masks were used not to be recognized more than protect them against an eventual virus. They all had the same type of uniforms, but I could not see any badge or other sign to identify them. As opposed to the military personal, they were kind of rude. Randomly they would choose people and make them lean forward to check if they weren’t hiding anything in their back.
One of the men came up to me. My bag with my laptop and my guitar sleeve were on the seat next to me. The man asked me to open my bag. He found some Mexican cash I was carrying with me. After finding out that I had money, he called his colleague. The colleague proceeded with the rest of the search. He first took all my money from the bag, and he asked me how much more I had. I did not answer. He threw the stash of cash on the seat next to me and kept pressuring me to tell him how much more money I had. At that point, I thought I was going to get robbed.
I replied to the agent, asking him if he could show me an ID before proceeding further. I asked him what kind of authority he bonged. The least he could have done was to introduce himself. Instead, he asked me, “-Do you have Euros? And later on to show him what I was hiding in my right pocket. I did have some more cash in that pocket, but I did not want to show it to him and the rest of the bus. I was also carrying a credit card in the same pocket. The agent kept pressuring me, “-What do you have in your pocket?!! “-What do you have in your pocket?!!” Finally, I showed him my credit card and asked him. “Who are you?” “-The Police?” Once he saw my credit card, he relaxed a bit. He then giggled and replied with sarcasm, “-yes, I am the police. ha ha ha.” He then took all my cash that was lying on the next seat. Put it nicely in a stack and handed the money back to me, making it evident to everyone else that he did not take any cash from me. After giving my money back, the whole crew got out of the bus.
An older woman sitting across the aisle advised me to put my money in my socks or underwear next time. I was not too fond of this situation. Besides being humiliated, now the entire bus knew that I had some cash on me, and our final destination happened to be Tijuana. By doing their little circus, those agents compromised my safety for the rest of the trip.
I could not wrap my head around this situation. How come the military was so professional and courteous while doing their job instead of those guys being rude and threatening. It did not make sense to me.
Third Check Point
A few hours later, our bus stopped again. An unmasked man seemed to be some police chief entered the cabin where we the passengers were sitting. Then several masked men all in black entered the cabin. They had toolboxes with them. They started one by one taking apart the individual air condition units each passenger had using electrical screwdrivers. After taking one unit down, they would introduce some mini serpentine cameras to see if there were any drugs hidden in the ventilation system. Once I realized that they were taking all the units down one by one, I became nervous. I could sense that this wasn’t a routine check.
Someone must have informed the authorities. After the inspecting agents checked a few air-conditioning units without any drugs being found, I could see the chief police’s frustration on his face. He seemed confident that the bus had some drugs. The reason why I got nervous wasn’t that I could be accused of smuggling drugs in case they would find something in the air conditioning unit above my head. I was more concerned about the authorities confiscating the bus if they encountered any illegal material. I did not want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere at night in the Mexican desert. What if they confiscated the bus. How would we make it to Tijuana? How much time it would take to TAP to send another bus. For all those reasons, I was hoping that they would not find any narcotics onboard.
Finally, the men in black did not take the integrality of the air-conditioning units down. Instead, they went to the bathroom area and took apart some of the wall structure in the tiny hallway between the two bathrooms. I could see that the chief police could still not believe that they weren’t able to find any drugs on board. After the crew put all the air-conditioning units back in place, we could finally continue the trip up north.
Fourth Check Point
So far, all the checkpoints had their fair share of surprises. I couldn’t fall asleep. With me being sleep-deprived and the stress coming from all those checkpoint-related events. I started to trip out and feel a bit paranoid. The journey started to give me the sensation I was riding a ghost train they have in amusement parks. As if at any given moment something could happen that would trigger a rush of adrenaline into my bloodstream.
I knew that up to Mexicali, there shouldn’t be any more checkpoints, but I was confident that there would be one more checkpoint before Tijuana. Daylight came into the picture while we were going up the mountains as we got closer to TJ. I remembered similar scenery when coming back from various tours to San Diego on Freeway 8. On this side of the border, the mountain range seemed to be way higher up, making the drive pretty challenging for the bus driver, but the view was amazing.
I started to get excited to be soon in Tijuana. I had guessed it right. After passing the mountains, while we were still in attitude, we stopped at an ultra-modern military facility called something “Aurora,” as far as I can remember it. On this occasion, we experienced the smoothest and the most professional search we had since the beginning of the trip from Guaymas.
The Second Check Point’s Mystery Solved
After making it to Tijuana, I posted an Instagram story about my stressful experience at those checkpoints. A Black Sea Storm follower from Türkiye responded by saying that people at the second checkpoint were probably cartel members. They were according to him making sure that no competition is entering their territory. I first thought that it could not be, but the more I replayed the scene in my head, the more it made sense. They probably did not want any drugs of their competitors or a high amount of cash circulating without their control.
If I knew those guys throwing my cash around, pressuring and intimidating me, were cartel members, I probably would have had more minor pairs of balls and not confront them the way I did. But, on the other hand, not knowing that they were cartel members made me act more like a stupid tourist who was unaware of the whole Mexican reality, so in the end, everything worked out fine for me.
I love the adventure component of my lifestyle, and I usually welcome it. However, the trip from Hermosillo to the US border I have done twice now, and I am not sure I want to do it again anytime soon.
Black Sea Storm on Spotify
Black Sea Storm on Apple Music
Black Sea Storm on YouTube (blackseastorm11)
Black Sea Storm on Instagram (blackseastorm6161)
Black Sea Storm on Facebook (blackseastorm11)
Black Sea Storm on Twitter