gringo tijuanense
[0.0.1 0.0.2 0.0.4 0.0.5 0.0.6]
Tijuana Mapatext 0.0.0.0.3.
a geographical & historical meander
un meandro historico y geografico
Tur Info
Part Three:
La Mesa
Cincoydiez[5&10],
Camionera Central, and the universal
Legend
ONCE UPON A TIME Tijuana was an old rancho born in a river valley surrounded
by canyons and hilltops. Then it would grow into a border megalopolis where one world ends and another began. Along the way a lot of heat will fit the shanty.
La Mesa.
La Mesa is the eastern half of the megalopolis. She is mostly a valley, but other, too. The name is official, she is a delegación, a big-section of town.
The river runs right through her, and puts together three branches in her plain. On one side of the river you come to Cinco y diez (5 & 10), and on the other you will find the CAM CENTRAL the great central bus station. These are only a few minutes apart from each other, but by appearance seem very different. 5 & 10 seems to be smack dab in the middle of the delegación, at the important crossing of two major boulevards, while the Camionera Central looks like it is hung below the hills outside on the edge of town.
You will also see, above the river and Insurgentes, the world's biggest shiny white Jesus. Soon enough, however, the world turns beyond, toward Presa and Otay and Lagos. They shake hands with La Mesa, in the hills, in the gulleys, in the dirty water and the distilled fresh, where a million huts and shops are getting built.
There's a good piece of parkland out here, on Insurgentes before the Cerro Colorado. They have concerts and a little train ride with animals and lots of picnic room everywhere. Parque Morelos is what the river zone could be like if anyone cared to make it better.
Once, not too many long ago, the part of town called La Mesa was all farmland and orchards. It was was not a part of town, it was the countryside outside the little old town of Tijuana down there on the corner of the river. Before they grew up it was - and it is - a big valley upriver from the narrow part by Agua Caliente, where the railroad crosses over, and the river changes direction, and focus, into another open place, another greater room within the moving forms of a valley in California.
0.0.1 Ancient History
Layout of the Town:
0.0.2 The River :
0.0.3 La Mesa :
0.0.3 5 & 10 :
0.0.3 Camionera Central (bus terminal) :
0.0.4 Downtown Centro :
0.0.4. Revolution Avenue :
0.0.4.Zona Rio :
0.0.4.Zona Norte/Coahuilla :
0.0.6.Hills :
0.0.5.Agua Caliente and "the boulevard" :
0.0.6.Otay Mesa :
0.0.6.Cerro Colorado :
0.0.6.El Florido :
0.0.6.Playas de Tijuana :
0.0.6.La Gloria :
Points Beyond:
0.0.6.Rosarito :
0.0.6.Ensenada :
0.0.6.Tecate :
Other Mapping Sites
TO: S.D.S.U. Tijuana River Watershed Site Highly recommended for real geography....
In this new piece of the valley from sacred mountain, the river will break from three arms and leave ragged canyons and cactus, to embrace a climate we must call Mediterranean and a valley that used to be farms and now is factories and superstores and houses houses houses.
Back in the coast, much closer to my pen from the valley of La Mesa, "Olde Tijuana" was more than ten or seven miles back down the river at today's downtown (centro), and La Mesa another twenty. Link La Mesa. Link Tecate. Link Tijuana and Disneyland.Not here, not anywhere near here, this was another corner far away from town, across the orchards and fields of sunflowers, yes it was a long walk. Yes there were some new areas across the river (Libertad), and then, a little ways along the "Bulevar" came the country club and Agua Caliente complex. But beyond Agua Caliente, this was (and is) the greater valley of La Mesa, farther upriver, was something else altogether.
You can see the valley of La Mesa in this big space photo below (which should load and display...) labled and spreading between Agua Caliente and the big hill of Cerro Colorado. Yes, right there... on the upper right quarter of the megalopolis, see?
