Tijuana Travel Forum

Can a person park their car on the US boarder and walk into Tijuana? Is this advisable? My kids 13 and 11 want to go into Mexico when we are in California. I thought this might be the easiest to do. Tell me more about entering Mexico and returning to the US. How long will it take to cross?

there was a recent posting by GuyRift which goes through the whole deal - he was wanting to make a visa run

check it out - it has most of what you need to know

ah here it is

http://forum.virtualtourist.com/discussion-406519-1-1-Travel-0-2-North_America-discussion.html

it was in the north america forum

You can do the border crossing in many ways. Most people drive to the border in San Ysidro, park their cars, and TJ is just right there. Others get there via trolley from San Diego. The San Ysidro border crossing has an information center. The San Ysidro shopping outlet is also in the vicinity.

Here's a link with information about the SY border crossing:

http://www.tijuana.com/info.html

Yes, a person can park their car on the US side of the border and walk across. There are several parking lots near and around the border crossing and the price will be about ten dollars a day. I give information about that on my San Ysidro page if you'd like to get a better idea.

There usually is no waiting time going into Tijuana, unless there is some sort of alert, which happens rarely.

Walking back to the USA side will take longer, sometimes the line is really long. Just make sure you don't stand in the (usually far right) line with people who are carring luggage/bags that takes much longer as the Officers take more time inspecting them.

In general, how long it takes to cross depends on too many variables to give you a definitive time. Fifteen minutes to a couple of hours. My suggestion is not to "cut it too close." I'd say average is half to full hour, but it could be less, but more likely more.

Also, make sure your kids know not to even joke about drugs/terrorists or anything like that while standing in line. They could be heard and you will be pulled into "Secondary" which is a much more complete search and could take several hours.

I have done it - parking and walking across. Just be mentally prepared as it may look run down and unsafe. But you will feel that you are no longer in USA and in a border town of Mexico. Worth doing it at least once.

Yes, you can, at San Ysidro. In fact, it's preferable: don't drive into Mexico, because it doesn't recognize U.S. auto insurance; you must buy a Mexican policy, which may or may not be valid should you have an incident. Also, Tijuana's police force is notoriously and historically corrupt. Gawd help you if you run a stop sign, fail to signal a turn, don't feed a meter...you get the idea. Only bribery will liberate you.

"US boarder." Are you thinking of parking at a lodging house, or did you mean "border," as in the limits of a country? Just funnin' ya, but oftentimes, spelling can make a big difference in how well a Q is understood on this site (examples: "there," they're," "their" and "two," "to," or "too"). Hope all replies help. Happy trails.

Anyway, walk into TJ in the daylight, keep your kids close to you, plan well in advance what you wish to see, and stay alert. It's so sad, but lately, the TJ drug gangs, which for awhile kept their "pistoleros" controlled, are at it again, shooting it out with the police and "federales" as well as each other. But mostly, this stuff is confined to certain districts. Use common sense and good judgement. IMHO, don't be too adventuresome in TJ; it's a world unto itself.