(Nick) Waking early to get to the border, we headed to San Diego, the border city with Mexico. The drive on the way down was typical of everything we had seen so far in America, big cars, big buildings and big scenery. We were in the mood for something new though, and Mexico was the way forward.

As we arrived in San Diego, we needed batteries for the trailer, so we pulled into a K-mart down the road from the border, buying the biggest batteries we could find. Unfortunately, being a little over zealous, the batteries we got were too big, and didn't fit, in an attempt to make them fit, we cut the handle off on battery, but this didn't help. Frustrated, we returned to the shop to get some replacements.

We were able to get some replacement batteries, but smaller ones, and were able to get the useless old batteries sold for their lead content. While cueing to exchange these items, a woman was giving the till assistant a terrible time, and argued at full volume, making very cutting personal remarks for over 40 minutes, about an item which cost $0.99! We couldn't wait to get to a country with more realistic needs. Outside, we installed the batteries and headed across to "International House of Pancakes" for an extremely sweet breakfast.

Returning to the wolf, we saw a business card left under the wiper, for a Baja racer team, looking at all the other cars in the area, we were the only ones to be given this card, probably because we had the biggest offroader in town! An excellent sign of things to come in Baja.

The Border with Mexico was exactly as we had expected, with mistrust for Mexico on the American side being obvious, a 20ft concrete wall extended in both directions, as far as the eye could see, US Soldiers patrolled the walls perimiter, and surveillance helicopters constantly flew overhead. The Navy had several destroyers in port and the US military had several enormous bases within minutes of the border.

The crossing through the border into Tijuana was surprisingly simple, requiring us only to purchase motor insurance for Mexico, which came with a useful roadbook and conversion table. We were even surprised that there was no immigration for us to go through to stamp us out of USA. We had read that Baja enjoys special customs status, so we would only go through Mexico customs for us and our vehicle when we took the ferry to the mainland.

Finally in Mexico, we all had a little celebrate, but agreed to ourselves that we would need to find camping tonight, and despite our belief that the American perception of Mexico was vastly exaggerated, that we should be wary anyway, certainly not driving at night, therefore, it would need to be secured before sunset.

With light fading fast, we pulled off the road to find a campsite we saw signposted. It was supposed to be 500m off the road. After a mile, we were getting a little worried, and Dan was becoming irate at our mistake. As we turned around to go back to the road and try again, a car pulled up alongside us, before we could ask for directions, a torrent of abuse came from the driver of the truck. For people who are extremely thick skinned, I will write an uncensored script of how the conversation went. For all others, read on:

Driver: "****** I almost ****** threw my ******* beer can through your ****** windscreen, *******!"

Dan: "Oh! Why would you do that?"

Driver: "******* driving all over the ******* road! I ****** saw you ******* drinking back in ******** town earlier!"

Dan: "What?"

Driver: "What the ****** is the matter with you? ****** drink drivers ******* ******!"

Dan: "Do you know if there is a campsite or trailer park near here?"

Driver: "Sure I ******* do! ******* follow me ********!"

Following the guy to the campsite, we discussed amongst ourselves what just happened. While we can't be sure, we came to the conclusion, he had seen someone, not us, in town, drinking, and had assumed it was us, but he was so drunk himself, it would probably not have mattered anyway. As we pulled up in the campsite, we saw another expedition vehicle, registered in Switzerland, and believe this was who he had seen in town.

Driver: "What the ******* is this ******* ******** vehicle anyway!?"

Dan: "Its a Land Rover Defender Wolf XD, we are an expedition travelling around the world from England"

Driver: "****** England eh!? I'm Jonesy! I'm from Wales! Thats why everyone calls me Jonesy! Can't you tell from my accent?" (Jonesy had a very slurred American accent, definitely not Welsh!)

Dan: "Okay... My Names Dan, this is my brothers Nick and Oliver, and Amy. We're from Ireland and England"

Jonesy: "That ****** explains why you're ******* using that ****** piece of ******* ********! If I were ******* doing that ******* I'd ******* be using a ******** ******** Jeep"

Dan: "Well, we've done quite a bit of driving off road now, and we have found that this is every bit as good as, if not better than Jeeps and Toyotas"

Jonesy: "****** ******** ******** ******** Land Rover ****** ******** ******** Jeep *********! Anyway, the ******* campsite is there. Don't go ******* swerving in my ******* way again or I'll ******* ******* beer can!"

Dan: "Ok, good night!!"

We now embarked on our first night camping, and as Amy, Oliver and I had not set up the tent or camp in over 6 months, we needed quite a lot of guidance on how to do things. We set up a campfire, and Oliver prepared dinner for us. It was surprisingly cold, and after a quick reconnaissanse, we found we were only 100m off the beach.

There was an American couple with a campervan also camping at the site, and we were able to share some beers with them before we went to bed to a DVD.

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