So today we met all of the people going on the tour - 54 in all (incl. us) 95% aussie and 80% female. We got to the hotel that the bus was departing from at around 7am. There were already people waiting - we had to fill in a sheet with next of kin type details and passport info. Had we gone to the intro dinner the night before (which apparently not many people attended) we could have saved that step, but meh.
We all started putting our bags on the bus - this was the first time we met Alex, our Tour Manager, and our bus driver, Silvia. I had one huge suitcase (which, in restrospect, i'm glad i brought instead of a smaller one) and a duffel bag. Not too heavy at that point, just the clothes I had brought from home and some stuff I'd bought. Little did I know how much more I would buy...
We got on the bus, eyeing off our tourmates, deciding who we did and didn't like.. I made some enemies very quickly (many of whom turned out to be good friends later on). We found our seats and Alex started talking us through what was going to happen over the next few weeks, introduced himself and Silvia to us and gave some general information about Contiki. We started driving at about 8.30-9am missing two people who we assumed hadn't turned up. I quickly learnt that if you're not on the bus on time, you get left behind and have to catch up on your own, at your expense.
About a two hour drive later we were in San Diego, our first stop of the tour. We were told of the "optionals" that we could join along the way if we wanted to (which you pay extra for) to do stuff that's not included on the tour. There was a San Diego Harbour cruise that Alex said everyone does because it's the first thing we do as a group, so we all paid $11 for that (he added up who joins which optionals, then got the money off us later in the tour). Worst $11 spent. The cruise showed us some houses that were owned by rich American families we'd never heard of. We did see Sea Lions on a buoy though. That was cool. We didn't really get to know any of the other people yet. We did, however, have our first interaction with the now-infamous Alana. More about her later.
The cruise finished and we all wandered around looking in shops and stuff for a bit, then got back on the bus for a city tour. Silvia drove us around San Diego with Alex telling us about the areas, the Gaslamp quarter, Balboa Park, Navy museums, etc. We drove past the bar that was featured in Top Gun apparently. Wouldn't recognise it from any other bar to be honest apart from all the Top Gun paraphernalia attached to it.
We then drove on to Tijuana, Mexico. The Contiki coach took us to a carpark which had a shuttle bus waiting for us. We got on that and it drove us over the border into Mexico. Our bus didn't have the insurance it needed to go into Mexico so this way was easier. Took about 20 mins to get into Tijuana. As soon as we crossed the border, you knew you were in Mexico. People selling all kinds of crap on the streets. There were even people on the other side of the road (heading back to the US) walking down selling stuff between the cars waiting in the queue. We arrived in a bus terminal and Alex took us to a restaurant that had really good chicken fajitas. He was right, they were really good. On the way there we were being hassled by everyone we walked past, wanting us to buy something from them. Very annoying after a while.
We got to the place and went upstairs to eat. Some people went elsewhere but there would have been a good 40 of us there. We ordered margaritas (2-for-1 deal) and food. The chicken fajitas were a bit different to what I expected - i got a sizzling plate of chicken, chilli, capsicum, another place of rice and bean goo, and communal bread to make the wrap yourself, which was pretty cool. Lots of tequila in the margaritas. There were three guys with guitars walking around singing songs to us as we ate, as well as a guy picking one of us at random to pour straight tequila down their throat, then proceed to close their mouth for them and violently shake their head before they had a chance to swallow. He did that to about 6 or 7 people - I was praying he wouldn't pick me. He didn't. Phew!
We then paid and left, looked around at a few shops. We had like 2 hours to kill. Everywhere there were knockoffs - bags, wallets, diamonds, jewellery. Everything imaginable. Kieren found a couple of handbags for his mum and sister, I bought some silver rings and some other stuff. Back to the bus terminal for the trip back to the US. We were expecting maybe 45 mins to get back across the border. Not 2.5 hours. there was a HUGE backlog of traffic of people leaving TJ to San Diego. We had a special bus lane but was still slow. It was because of US customs. We saw signs for businesses that you can call and tell them what duty free stuff you want, then they bring it to your car for you (knowing that you'll be there for a while). I thought that was clever.
So while we were waiting on the bus to go back over, we had 2 girls in front of us, and 2 behind. We didn't realise they were all travelling together. They ended up being 4 of our best friends on the tour - Alana, Babs (Barbara), Jax (Jacqui) and Jen. Alana and Babs are from Sydney, Jax and Jen from Canberra. A&B went to school together, and B, J&J went to uni together. The reason we started talking to them was because they were throwing paper at each other and we were caught in the crossfire. Started chatting to them, they're all about 24 years old. I recognised Alana from somewhere and she recognised me, but didn't know where from. Still don't. But it was good we made some friends on the first day.
We got through customs fairly quickly (when they got to me they sent me to the front of a new line, so we were in and out inside of a minute). Then we got back on the crappy Mexican shuttle bus we were on to get back to the Contiki bus. After a quick bus change, we continued on to the hotel, got our bags out and had a rest in the room. A group dinner was organised at Dick's Last Resort, a local restaurant where the staff are known for acting like ... well ... dicks. The waitress that served us was just rude, acting like we were all stupid. I guess she's allowed to there. We had a waiter too and he was funny. Apparently the done thing there is to throw paper napkins are each other at the table. Not wanting to look out of place, we did just that. The waiter even grabbed a handful of napkins and threw them into the fan above us. There were napkins EVERYWHERE. He also made paper hats for a few people with phrases he wrote on them (eg. "My thong is on backwards" and "I like blowing Bubbles" - this person was sitting next to someone else who's hat said "Hi! I'm Bubbles!") The food was good, and everyone had a good time.
The over-21s went out to a bar or something, the underagers went back to the hotel because the place they were going checks IDs, according to Alex. At the hotel we met Jane and Rachel - two girls that we'd actually seen on an Orange County tour we'd done the day before Contiki started. So they came into our room and we were all chatting for a while. Became pretty good friends with them. They were getting off the tour in Las Vegas, where a lot of the other people were going around to San Fran or back to Anaheim. We usually got to bed at around midnight.
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