I woke up in the morning, and opened the trailer door, the tinted windows and black out curtains of the trailer belying what was beyond them. A crack of the door was all that was needed to make me recoil and shade my eyes with my hand against a sun whose intensity we haven’t experienced in months. Sunbeam RV park indeed.
Stepping out of the trailer, I was greeted by the smell of hot rubber on pavement, a familiar smell to any parking lot in the summer, the only difference being that it is winter, and in this parking lot, you live in.
We are now staged at the precipice of the country, the hills of the other lands visible on the horizon, ready to welcome us, whether we are ready or not.
Our preparations are as complete as they will ever be. Every crevasse of the trailer filled with thousands of decisions based on incomplete and conflicting information scrounged from outdated guide books, tall tales of friends and family who have done the journey long ago, youtube videos of kindred vagabonds, and the contrary opinions of armchair travelers whose primary occupation seems to be in the promulgation of misinformation in topical facebook groups. If you were to ask me how I felt, I would answer that I felt just as unprepared as we had been before preparing.
Expecting that we may encounter a lack of credit card infrastructure in the small dusty towns of Baja through which we will pass, our only outstanding item of preparation is to exchange $2,000 dollars for about $38,000 Pesos. Enough to be able to pay for gas, food, and lodging while in transit for the next 1,600 miles return trip.
We didn’t think we would have too much trouble exchanging our money, so we left that chore until late in the afternoon after getting some work done on our business.
El Centro is a town full of contradictions. Translated “The Center”, it’s in the middle of nowhere, close to nothing of interest (to us anyway), and certainly not central, sitting in the South East corner of the state. Yet driving through it, it’s abuzz with new construction in every direction, and an infrastructure unable to keep up with the demands of its growth. Parking lots and gas stations full of cars, traffic in every direction, though I’m not sure where they may be coming from or where they are going, on account of there being nowhere to come from or go.
For a town used to a certain volume of cross border commerce, exchanging dollars for Pesos turned into the most difficult task of our journey so far, taking multiple unsuccessful attempts to accomplish, with each failed attempt, testing our ability to adapt and overcome, and my ability to stay cool.
The first place that we went to, to exchange our money was a drive through money exchange chain just off the freeway, closing early in the afternoon in 30 minutes. When I drove up to the window, I was completely taken by surprise by the fact that the teller spoke only Spanish. Not having crossed the border yet, I was at that moment mentally unprepared, not sure how to mime the concept of exchanging money.
I had no idea what was being said, but it’s a cash exchange place. They do one thing, and one thing only, so why do we even need to speak? Undeterred, I pushed my stash of cash through the window which the teller accepted, counted, and wrote the exchange amount on a piece of paper. Nodding my approval, she then asked for my identification. I tried to give her my driver’s license, but she wouldn’t accept it, motioning to a sign indicating that for amounts over $1,000, I must provide my passport.
My normal mode of operations is to try to knead at the edges of whatever inflexible system is in place, in a way that allows me find a creative solution to any problem. Everything can always be worked out or negotiated, knots massaged out, as long as there are two willing parties on each side of the table. Maybe we could split it into smaller amounts and perform two transactions, so that the passports are not required. Similarly, maybe Lisa and I could split the transaction to reduce any appearance of impropriety or deviation from the rules. However, I was hamstrung by a complete inability to communicate with the teller or negotiate a solution. All I could do is shrug that I didn’t have the passport with me. She returned the cash, and we parked in the lot to try to determine what to do next.
We didn’t have time to go back to the trailer and return with the passport before this location would close. We could try the nearest bank branch to see if they would be able to exchange some money, otherwise we would have to find another way.
Upon arrival at the bank just down the street, the teller at the bank said that they don’t exchange money on the spot, though we could order some to be mailed to us next week. Obviously without time or an address, this was not a viable solution for us. She also said that we may be able to exchange money at the check cashing outlet across the street.
We looked around outside of the bank, and we could not find anything that resembled a check cashing outlet, so we decided to drive back to the trailer to get our passports, and at the same time perform further research on where else we could do this exchange.
The money exchange industry in El Centro, and likely across the country, has changed dramatically, recently. Whereas it used to be run by independent mom and pop currency exchange, check cashing, and payday loan establishments, in what looks like the last five years, every single one of them has been bought out or taken over by a single corporate conglomerate, that only performs money exchange services.
Looking up each of these establishments in Google maps, each one was named something different: AAAA this, and Cash-O-Rama that. Yet opening up street view, the signage above each door pointed at a complete consolidation of ownership into a single corporate entity.
Fortunately, some of the offices of this conglomerate closed later than others, and we headed back into town, to the closest one that had the latest closing hours.
There were two teller windows at this location, and we went to the open one. With our passports in hand we were ready to get this transaction finalized, and get some long overdue dinner. This time the teller was bilingual, which should help speed things up, so I handed her the cash, and preemptively my passport, in an effort to make everything go as smooth as possible.
She counted the money, showed us the exchange amount, which was the same as at the other location, to which I nodded my approval. She took the passport, photocopied it, typed some things into her computer and told me to fill out a form asking for my occupation, position, phone number of my employer, address, last 10 residences, and other personal questions, that in the wrong hands could completely take over ones identity.
Certainly I was uncomfortable sharing this much information, but what choice did I really have? Being self employed, and listed as President on the LLC formation documents, that’s what I put down for my title on the form. She took the form, typed it into her computer, looked up at me with skepticism and asked, “You are presidente, senor?”, to which I nodded as reassuringly as I could. She looked back toward her computer to continue typing with a look that said “Yeah, ok buddy, I’m going to put this in, but you and I both know you are no presidente”. As she kept typing for another good fifteen minutes, we saw at least eight people visit the other teller, say something quick in Spanish, whether to exchange pleasantries with the other teller about the weekend’s happenings, or to discuss the always nice weather, and leave having exchanged small denominations of less than a few hundred pesos.
When our teller was done typing, she turned to me and said, “Ok, all I need now is a bank statement where this money came from.”.
“What do you mean, I just took this money out today, it won’t be on a bank statement. Here’s a bank receipt showing the withdrawal. Will this do?”
She turned to the other teller, and they spoke rapidly in Spanish for a few seconds, nodding to each other, then turned back to me. “I’m sorry senor, the system says I need a bank statement.”
“But this money won’t be shown on any statement!”, I said.
“Yes, senor, I just need a print out of a statement from the bank where this money came from.”
“But I don’t live here, and I don’t drive around with my bank statements, and besides no statement will show this money withdrawal from today.”, I protested.
And so we went around, in this circle for a while, neither of us able or willing to say or hear something different.
“Ok, well can I just exchange an amount that doesn’t require a bank statement?”, I asked trying a different approach.
“I’m sorry senor, once you have been flagged, we cannot exchange any amount for you until we have a bank statement.”
Clearly we were at an impasse. Worse yet, the consolidation of all money exchanges into a monopoly by a single conglomerate, meant that I had no alternatives, absolutely nowhere else to take my business. Not that there would be any time to find one at this hour, anyways. The bank had closed already, so we couldn’t go there for help. In my mind, we had two remaining options to overcome this hurdle: we could try to find an open printing center, and try to figure out how to get a PDF of last month’s bank statement off my phone and onto a public printer; or we could go back to the trailer, and unbox the printer that we bought just for the purpose of satisfying any potential bureaucratic theatrics. I didn’t actually believe we would ever need it, and I certainly didn’t think that we would need it before we even stepped one foot over the border.
With hanger at uncomfortable levels, Lisa and I decided that it may be best for us to retreat to the trailer, again, and eat something as well.
“If I go and print last month’s statement will that work?”, I asked the teller.
“Yes, senor, I just need a statement from the bank that shows money going in and out.”
I looked at my watch, it was 7:45pm. We were, twenty minutes from the trailer, so we would need at least an hour for the third round trip to the city.
“When do you close?” I asked.
She looked at her colleague, and siad “Nine pm, senor. We close at nine”.
We were buzzed in the gate to the RV park for the third time in as many hours, set up the brand new printer without any technical issues, and printed last month’s bank statement, as well as every other statement from every other bank account just for good measure. We had some quick ramen to marginally increase our stamina in preparation for the next potential set of hurdles, and headed back to the money exchange place.
As we began driving back around a quarter after 8pm, Lisa looked up the location to help point me back to it, though by this time an unnecessary navigation aid as the route has been ingrained into my muscle memory. Our hearts sank as she saw that the listing on the map said that the location closed at 8 pm instead of nine, though to be fair, Google also said that it was still called by its original mom and pop name. “She better not have lied to us”, we both thought out loud, knowing that we didn’t have any other choice, but to hope that she wasn’t.
Not experienced with the depth of my persistence, the teller seemed surprised to see us walking through the door once again at 8:45pm, just a few minutes before her closing time.
She took all the things that I had brought with me, without saying anything, started typing again, looked over to me and said “This statement is from last month.”
Straining with a great deal of effort to maintain whatever composure remained, I said “Yes, statements are monthly, this month has not been generated yet. This is a statement of the bank account from which the money came that shows money going in and out of it, and here is the bank receipt of withdrawal from that account.”
She turned to her colleague as if to ask her something, thought for a moment, then turned back around to her computer without asking her question. I can only assume that at that last moment, she capitulated as she decided that she did get what the system was asking for, a print out of a statement.
Finally, a win? She typed for a few more minutes, turned to me, and said. “Ok, I just need one last thing, and that is your social security card.”
If this wasn’t a test, I don’t know what it was.
With a combination of desperation and exasperation now clearly audible in the warble of my strained voice, I said “I don’t carry my social security card with me, nobody does.”
“Oh, all I need is the number, senor. Do you know your number?” she asked. I know that the she deeply hoped that I did, while she waited with bated breath, for me to catch mine to respond.
“Yes, of course” I said, writing it down on a piece of paper and handing it to her, air returning to our lungs once more.
She typed the number in, then printed and handed me a piece of paper. The piece of paper showed the amounts involved in the exchange, all of the data that I have so far provided to her over the last 3 hours, and a big bold determination emblazoned at the bottom of the paper:
“LOW RISK”
Victorious, but emotionally drained we returned to the trailer with our bag full of Pesos at exactly 10 pm.
We planned to meet our friends at the border gas station at 5:30am the following morning, which meant that we would have to wake up at 4:30am, and get on the road to the gas station by five. We were both exhausted, and Lisa went to bed so that at least one of us would be able to get some rest. I spent the next three hours trying to quietly break down camp, and getting the trailer hooked up to the car, so that in the morning we would have very little to do, but get on our way.
Still rattled from the day, my head hit the pillow at 1:30am.
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