Day Two

"Okay, it looks like the first thing on the room service menu is lube" Holly commented. I looked at the Spanish menu. "Yeah, they list condoms too. And they really seem to highlight which channels are 'adult' as opposed to say, CNN, like a normal hotel" I answered. We swung open our garage door and walked up to OXXO for coffee. As we came back in, we noticed a pretty hot woman with a very small dress on, really high heels and a lot of makeup for ten o'clock in the morning. The ladies with the headsets that ran the place were shepherding her through a nondescript door. We went about our business.

"You are in a total hooker hotel!" my former exchange partner cried as we walked to a bar to watch the Mexico - U.S. game. "It's so cheap because people only stay four hours! Are there a lot of adult channels and a pretty good sound system?", "Well, yeah now that you mention it....", "They didn't give you a key because nobody needs a key! They do what they're going to do and then they leave! If a hotel is called a 'motel' in Mexico, that's what it's for. You should get out of there" he informed us. You learn something new everyday.

We raced over to the east side of town to my old neighborhood to climb the hill to Hector's house for dinner. I was running late and tore across town and up the potholed dirt hill, until the car slowed down, sputtered and stopped. Hmmm, gas really helps these things run. I was horrified. Late, and now out of gas. Rude asshole American. Hector and his friend jumped out of the car and inserted a tube in Hector's gas tank. His friend took a "bien bonito trago" of gas in his mouth and spit it out in an attempt to siphon gas into a jug for my car. The tube wasn't long enough. They stood in the dark on a dusty hill above Tijuana, rosaries gleaming on their necks while I backed my car down the hill and to the side of the potted dirt road and jumped in their car to go back to town for gas. Hector's friend played loud, American gangster rap as we bumped along the road. People burned garbage in the street in front of the mix of shanties and modest homes that make up Hector's make-shift neighborhood. Finally, we had the gas and climbed the hill again, using a modified plastic bottle as a spout to insert the gas in Holly's car. It wouldn't start. "La bomba," Hector's friend commented, "está vacia". He directed me to roll the car backwards down the hill until I was on flatter ground. It took a while. The car finally started. We roared up the hill and arrived at the dinner party, now two hours late, while Roberto and his wife and Josefina and my sister, who does not speak Spanish, patiently waited. Rude asshole American. I was mortified.

We talked until late in the night. I was tired, and my Spanish powers of comprehension started to fail me the later it got, as wild barrages of words flew out of my friends' mouths. It had been a long day. A trip to Playas, game watching in Zona Río, a race back to east Tijuana and a long dinner party. We headed back to our hooker hotel. The place was hopping. Cars pulled in and out and the headset ladies scurried from room to room, many pushing cleaning carts in order to ready the rooms for the next four hours. We pulled in. "We're in 110" I told the woman with the headset. "Your room has been turned over," she informed us, with a smile, "you have to pay". "No," I answered "we paid this morning". "On the weekends the rate is only for five hours," she informed me "do you want to take your room for five more?". "No," I answered, "just tell me how we can get our stuff". We quickly cleared out and drove toward the centro. It was late, pushing two in the morning. We wheeled into a high end hotel, one with a front desk, keys and wifi in the rooms. No lube, no adult channels.

We paid the insanely exorbitant rate and slept as if in a tomb.