We rolled into Mazatlan and immediately purchased our tickets for home - Tijuana. It would be a grueling 26-hour bus ride, and we had planned to spend a day and a half of relaxation to prepare for it. We marveled at the fact that this was the last bus ticket we’d have to buy on our trip, and took a cab into the city.

We were looking forward to Mazatlan because it looked cheap, but that turned out to not be the case. It was a $4 cab ride that we had prepaid at the station, a bit much for the short jaunt into town. We got to the hotel and learned that prices had severely increased to nearly double. The cab driver offered to drive us down the way to another hotel. We passed one that was advertising $35 a night, but he insisted that was not during high season. The next hotel was too much. We drove on.

We ended up at “The Sands” hotel, a charming little place with a pool and water slide, big dolphin sculptures leaping around in front, and a big Jesus overseeing all the activities. The driver told us that it was only $60 a night. Still too much for us, but we thought that was as cheap as we’d get. I walked in and saw the room, dark and dreary, but we took it. We tipped the driver $2, a big tip, but we thought he had been helpful driving us around. He gave a high-pitched laugh as he left. “That was strange,” I thought.

When we went to pay, they insisted it was $65. I argued that it was $60, but they stood firm. We were really hesitant, but the taxi had left and we had just been on a bus for 8 hours. We were tired. We decided to stay for the night and go find a cheaper place later.

We got to the room and the sink was broken. We waited for 45 minutes for them to come and fix it, got fed up, and took off in search of food. We walked a bit down the road along the beach and went into the hotel advertising $35 a night. It was pretty dumpy, but it was $35 a night, in total, not per person, not just for low season. We realized the cab driver had just screwed us. He got the $4 cab fare, our overly generous $2 tip, and an additional $5 kickback from the hotel. One last screw, we thought, just for old time’s sake.

I was infuriated and spent the next hour or so storming around as we looked for food. Beth managed to keep perspective and convinced me to take in down a notch. We walked around the Malecon for a long time, and made it into town, about a 1.5 mile walk. Once there, everything seemed utterly deserted. We stopped and asked a cop about a plaza with restaurants that we had read about in the Lonely Planet. He started giving us directions — 8 blocks this way, then 3 blocks that way. It seemed like a long walk but we started on our way. Within a block, though, we saw a diner chain called Panama’s and decided it would do.

We split nachos and enchiladas, and dipped into 3 different types of salsa. We decided that those were the best nachos we’d had in Mexico.

After that, we walked around, found the cute plaza lined with restaurants and decided to come back the next night. On the walk home, Beth saw another hotel and suggested we check it out. It turned out to be decent and have air conditioning for $35, so we decided we’d check in the next morning. We took a long walk back to our expensive hotel to work off those nachos and turned in early.

The next day we got up and went for a jog. It was our first jog on concrete and we both were a bit worried about our knees. But all went well, and we felt great after the exercise.

We ate breakfast, moved to our new hotel in town, and set off to find a grocery store, where we’d stock up on bananas, nutella, Nutrigrain bars and an avocado — our food for the day-long bus ride. I also bought a pair of sunglasses since my last ones had broken, but by the end of the day, I had lost them already. I went back to the Internet cafe where I thought I’d left them and instead found a dead mouse under the chair where I had been sitting.

After sunset, we took a cab over to the plaza for dinner, settling on a restaurant where we had shrimp empanadas and shared a large margarita.

Beth: The next morning, we slept in past when we wanted to get up. We frantically finished packing and ran out to grab some breakfast — our last real meal for the next 24 hours.

There weren’t many restaurants in our neighborhood so Lauren and I booked it back to Panama’s, a 10-minute walk away. When we got there, we decided to scrap breakfast and get the nachos again instead.

The service was fast… except for getting the check. We had to ask for it three times and 15 minutes later, it still hadn’t come. We were really pushing our time, so Lauren went out to hail a cab. When the check came, I threw down the money and ran outside to join her.

We managed to get a cab that would take us to the hotel to get our bags and then to the bus station. Despite our panic, we made it with plenty of time… especially since the bus to Tijuana was, as usual, nearly half an hour late leaving.

Lauren and I immediately took half a Dramamine each since the road would be winding. Later that night, we each took another full one to sleep through the night. We needed it. The bus was filled with children — two of which were crying, pooping, screaming infants. I couldn’t believe these poor women had to bring their babies on a 26-hour bus ride.

On the positive side, we had plenty of opportunities to stretch our legs on this last trip — because every couple of hours, it seemed, we had another massive inspection by the Mexican military. Lauren and I had been through dozens of checkpoints by this time, but none had been as thorough as this. The soldiers made everyone open their bags and they rifled through everything — underwear, handbags, the works. At one checkpoint, Lauren and I saw them cutting locks off of commercial trucks and using long, sharp metal rods to poke into bags to make sure there wasn’t anything hidden inside. The checkpoints had photos of tons of cocaine that had been confiscated off of various buses and trucks, and the creative ways in which they had been hidden (and discovered).

While we were still several hours away from Tijuana, I looked up and saw a long, never ending fence. Suddenly I realized what I was looking at.

“Look, Lauren,” I exclaimed. “It’s the border! That’s the United States!”

It was the first time Lauren had seen the continental U.S. since leaving last October. Granted, it was an ominous fence and desert on the other side, but it’s what we like to call home.

The fence went for miles and then suddenly stopped. It would pick up and then have a gap in the middle for no reason. (No comment.) Lauren and I couldn’t take our eyes off of it, though.

We finally rolled into Tijuana 2 hours late, making our last bus ride a whopping 28 hours. We couldn’t wait to grab our bags (which had not been stolen on any of the bus rides) and go check into a hotel. Mexican security slowed us down though, forcing us to have our bags x-rayed, and a self-important Mexican immigration officer insisted on inspecting our passports, telling us what we already knew — that we needed to pay our tourist card fee. I actually was a bit snippy with him — a first for me on the trip. (Lauren: She means, immigration officials… the first time she has been snippy with immigration officials.)

We made it out to the taxi stand and asked for the cost to the city. $17+ dollars, the official replied.

Lauren and I were blown away. We hadn’t paid this much for a taxi since we took one all the way to Managua from Granada at 4 in the morning. There was no way we were paying this.

Reluctantly, we went and found a local bus and got on. We wanted anything but to be on another bus. But for just 65 cents, it took us almost to the front door of our hotel, so we couldn’t complain.

We quickly checked into the Hotel Lafayette (a bit of a dump that we kept worrying had bed bugs) and went downstairs to grab our first real meal in 24 hours. We suffered from sticker shock — prices were in American dollars and were almost American prices. And we didn’t know whether to speak Spanish or English since our waiter appeared to be fluent in English and kept talking to us in English with Spanish words thrown in here and there.

We indulged ourselves with two sodas each and Lauren got the best Chile Rellenos I’ve ever put in my mouth (my tamales were nothing to write about). We kept laughing because our hands were shaking — too much adrenaline from being so close to home, I guess.

With all the signs for the U.S. border, we couldn’t help but go see it for ourselves. We followed the signs crossing streets and a bridge until we finally saw it — The U.S. Border Crossing.

There was no fanfare waiting for us — not even a Welcome to the United States sign — but we were happy to see home anyway. We walked all the way up to the gate where they start checking passports, and since I had been carrying our passports, we joked about just leaving right then.

But Katie would be joining us the next day, spending one last night on the road with us before getting us across the border and to Los Angeles to meet up with Lauren’s family. So we ogled the border one last time and turned around to go back to our hotel. Just two more nights were ahead of us.