After several miles of being lost on a freeway and following scant signs for the I5 to San Diego, we were spat into a line of vehicles along a desolate thoroughfare. We missed the border crossing in Tijuana. Now we were someplace else. We were not quite sure where. In our minds the border was just around the corner beyond our line of vision. In reality, it was.

Also in reality, it was five and a half hours away.

"Hey uh….your car is really leaking something there….like…uh…a LOT…" a young American female said with her sandy hair tousled out the window from where her head was thrust.

Desiree smiled. "Oh thank you!" she said cheerfully, as if we had just received a compliment.

"No, I mean, like it's seriously leaking…"

"Ok, thanks!" Lindsey and I chimed in.

"Yeah and uh…well…now there's smoke coming out of your car…"

"Really?" Des said with some alarm, looking up out of her driver side window.

"Yeah…like…a…"

Before the tourist could finish her sentence the engine thrust out a billowing cloud of smoke and steam which blocked her from our sight.

We pulled over.

"Are you kidding me?" Lindsey said. Her eyes were wide. Desiree looked anxious but commanded the situation.

"Look, we'll wait for it to cool off," she said smiling positively. "Lock your doors."

I started laughing. Our car had just exploded in the worst traffic jam I'd ever seen (I live in Los Angeles, so that says something), and we were still in Mexico. Mexico. The place three innocent-looking young females are never supposed to go alone. And they certainly aren't supposed to break down with their swimsuits on and absolutely no, I repeat no, radiator fluid, oil or anything else "repair" like.

I should probably mention that between the three of us our Spanish is limited to: "How much is", "I want coffee with milk" and "How old are you".

"Where the hell is your next Jiffy Lube?" was not in our vocabulary.

We sat next to the long line of barely moving vehicles for about forty-five minutes—pouring water in every crevice of the engine, gingerly pulling the cap off the radiator, and squatting to see how much of that water landed on the ground beneath. The car seemed to stop leaking. The smoke was gone. And the radiator was filled with water.

We got back in the line.

Within a few minutes the car overheated again—sending the temperature needle up against the H as if it were a magnetic force and forcing smoke against the windshield worse than before.

"Turn on the heater," I said to Des. I've had experience with overheating engines. So she turned it on in the near-90 degree desert and we braced ourselves against the rolling wave of engine exhaust that toppled onto our laps. The car didn’t stop smoking, so we pulled off the road. Again. We cussed, again. While pouring water back onto the engine we noticed that rather than sitting in the line of vehicles, many cars were yanking themselves out of line and gunning it up the sandy border of the road—barely missing us in their quest to cut off the line at the turn up ahead.

And so the line stood still. With every passing car we grew more annoyed. Couldn't they see they were the reason no one else was going anywhere?

Finally, we got back into the line.

Two hours later, we had moved about 40 feet.

The only way to keep the car from dying was to turn off the engine, put it in neutral, and push the car forward to keep the engine cool. Since it was the world's slowest moving line, it really wasn't that much trouble. But cars are heavy no matter what. And despite the fact that we were surrounded by people, only five people in an entire 6 and a half hours, ever stopped to see if they could help.

So there we were, pushing our car down the long, twisted road that really wasn't as long as it was just slow, in our swimsuits and flip flops in the hot Mexican sun. Occasionally we turned the engine on to get the car up a hill, but we did so with the heater blasting and our skin red and glistening. We couldn’t tell if we were blistering from the sun or the heater. And our water had long since run out on account of the radiator. Yet we moved forward only inch by inch, hour after hour.

Children exploited by their parents pan-handled in between the vehicles. People sold puppies that would no doubt die somewhere between the seller's arms and the buyer's homes. Grimy, pathetic-looking children in the gutter all around us made our stomachs ache. Their parents ignored them unless they wandered too far to beg. We took turns being heartbroken at the state of human affairs around us and then laughing at our predicament. The young couple high on weed in the car in front of us tended to laugh a lot at our predicament as well.

When we finally got to the border five and half hours from our first break-down—sunburned, sweaty, tired, hungry and severely dehydrated, the border officer asked:

"In what country do you hold citizenship?"

Desiree was flustered and exhausted and answered quickly, "California."

I would have laughed but I was too distracted by the officer's eyes. They were the opposite of crossed. Each eyeball looked a different direction. The strange-eyed man asked a couple questions and let us through. We could have had our trunk filled with children and cocaine, or whatever they sell in the form of brand-name prescription drugs, but he didn't check. If anything, Desiree's funny answer should have sent up a red flag and he should have checked out the entire vehicle. But he didn't. I was not comforted by that in the least.

Unlike most of the Americans who were in Mexico, we were not there to conduct Christian tourism (volunteering at an AID agency or something) or to commit debauchery. We just wanted to leave the US for a weekend. Considering the time-frame of a weekend, that limits your options. Upper Baja California seemed like an ideal option for us. We could at least see beaches and little towns south of the border. We did see beaches and towns but we mostly saw bike-riders and impoverished people pimping out virtually anything to make money. We saw that, and of course, the inside of our car.

But in that line of hundreds of cars I wasn't thinking about being an American who came to engage in debauchery. I was thinking about what it must be like to try become one.