It was time for me to go home, to head north to San Francisco. I spent my last pesos on a taxi ride from the beach to the San Isidro border crossing. “Right over there, that’s where I crossed the line,” Hector points to the US-Mexican border, known here as “La línea” or the line. “In the early 1990s all you had to do was wait until the patrol car faced the other way, they can’t be patrolling only one spot, they have to move, you know?” Hector crossed at night, in the middle of a heavy rain storm, following well trodden paths north to Los Angeles. He told me that he stupidly got involved in criminal activity, and was eventually deported, vowing to never get involved with “cosas chuecas” (criminal activity) again. “My two nephews work as hired assassins for the cartel in Tierra Caliente in Michoacan; whatever you do, don’t go to Michoacan, it’s a war.” The war Hector is referring to is a bloody conflict between rival drug factions that has been raging for many years and has claimed thousands of lives. Hector says his nephews make more in a few hours of work than he could make in a year, “but I won’t go back to that, I swore to never get involved with cosas chuecas again. I drive my cab, I make $20 USD a week, and I am happy. There’s no need to go back to those things. Not anymore.”