Visit and explore Tijuana
Tijuana is the westernmost city in Latin America and if you have not visited it, perhaps you should schedule a trip soon to immerse yourself in this charming border town that is also the most populated in Baja California.
Tijuana and San Diego (USA) are centers of the same metropolitan area divided by the international border.
- On the Mexican side – Tijuana, Rosarito, and Tecate.
- On the USA side – San Diego, Chula Vista, and National City.
Tijuana is an original city since it has features of a Mexican city that at the same time has features of an American city. It is famous for its really cheap items and for its nightlife.
In Tijuana you can find, both in shops and from street vendors, many articles made by hand by the natives, especially leather goods, silver jewelry, and hand-woven articles.
What to see in Tijuana?
Tijuana Cultural Center – CECUT is the main cultural landmark of the city. Its main structure is an impressive dome is the work of Mexican architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Manuel Rosen Morrison.
This icon of the city is home to the Baja California State Orchestra and the Centro Hispanoamericano de Guitarra. In addition, the Tijuana Innovadora event takes place there every two years, a meeting dedicated to science, art, and technology.
Museum of the Californias is part of the Tijuana Cultural Center and traces Californian history and culture from before the arrival of Europeans to the present day.
The Caracol Garden is a large outdoor space of the Tijuana Cultural Center and is the place to immerse yourself in the Mayan, Toltec, and Aztec civilizations and several others that make up the Mexican indigenous cultural heritage.
Tijuana Wax Museum: is another institution belonging to the Tijuana Cultural Center. The wax characters are distributed in 4 rooms: the pre-Hispanic period, the colonial period, the legends and stories, and the heroes of the republic.
Admire the replicas of characters from the remote past, such as Cuauhtémoc, Moctezuma, and Hernán Cortés; from the independence and revolutionary era (Hidalgo, Zapata) and the recent past (Pedro Infante, Cantinflas) is an experience that is both aesthetic and fun.
El Trompo Museum is a space dedicated to the dissemination of science and technology through interactive means, which are a delight for the little ones. The museum has 4 interactive rooms, the “Experimental” room being the most entertaining.
The Trompo Museum also has a 220-seat high-definition 3D movie theater and an auditorium for 4,000 people where cultural events and artistic presentations are held.
El Cubo Museum, integrated into the Tijuana Cultural Center, is a place of art in the city. There you can admire works by the great masters of universal art and attend various cultural events.
In its busy “Estación Vizcaíno” you can enjoy the great compositions of classical music and literary recordings in the voices of the most important Latin American writers. Its terraces and its mezzanine are frequent scenes of artistic presentations.
Tijuana History museum is located in the Palace of Culture. This is the ideal place to start getting to know the city. Tijuana is relatively young since it was founded in 1889.
All aspects of the birth and evolution of a city are included in the 5 permanent rooms. From the first urban planning to the economic history of Tijuana, passing through the main political, social, and cultural events.
Mariachi and Tequila Museum is a nice space dedicated to the drink and the national musical genre, that will surprise you. There you will know about the millenary cultural process around the emblematic liquor of the country.
Feria de las Californias fair is held in the second half of August or the first of September. This is Tijuana’s annual fair, which attracts thousands of visitors. There is a village theater, concerts, palenque, equestrianism, a food fair, traditional games, and more.
Parks and recreation areas in Tijuana
Morelos Park
Morelos Park on Insurgentes Boulevard in Tijuana.
This park is named after the priest and patriot José María Morelos, a hero of Mexican Independence. This beautiful place of trees, green areas, and water offers the possibility of playing outdoors, taking a boat ride on the lake, or on your child’s train.
You can rent a grill and prepare your own barbecue or eat in the restaurant.
The park also has a small zoo where you will see several native species of Mexico.
Teniente Guerrero park
In the heart of Tijuana, there is a first-hand place to take a break from the hectic activity of the city: the Teniente Guerrero Park. Sitting on one of its benches, under a lush tree, you can review your options for lunch or plan your next walks.
Tijuana chess fans made their sanctuary in this place, so if you are a chess fan, you can play a game or just watch.
The Friendship Park
Friendship Park is a half-acre binational park located along the US-Mexico border in the Tijuana region. This park includes the border fence dividing the two countries where residents of both countries can meet in person.
It has grills, a bicycle track, and areas for children’s games, one of them for disabled children.
During the weekends there are open-air theater performances.
The Alamar Forest
The Alamar Forest is a riparian zone – an area at the interface between soil and freshwater – bathed by a small stream also called Alamar. It is one of the main concerns of Tijuana ecologists due to the deterioration it has experienced in recent years.
Medical tourism in Tijuana
The wave of so-called “medical tourism” has been so great in recent years that Tijuana in 2018 received around 1.2 million patients who came seeking health treatment.
Medical tourism has always existed in Tijuana, but not to the extent that it is experiencing last few years. It is an industry that is not new, but that is in great expansion, and Tijuana is undergoing a transformation, with new hospitals and clinics.
Tijuana today has advanced technology in the medical field and experience with specialists.
The low costs of consultations, procedures, drugs, and surgeries – prices between 30% and 70% less compared to the USA, make Tijuana prosper as a great health center.
When walking through the streets of Tijuana it is almost impossible not to come across eye-catching signs – mostly in English – that invite passersby to visit a doctor.
In general, the offices in the center of Tijuana are of dentists, but in this area and in the Rio commercial zone there are also large advertisements for hospitals and pharmacies that offer their services for all kinds of medical procedures.
Since the mid-20th century, Americans have crossed the border into Tijuana to obtain low-cost health treatments as well as “alternative therapies”.
The advantage of Tijuana’s geographical location goes hand in hand with the development of technology, the supply of infrastructure -hospitals and clinics- and the expertise of specialists. Because of the USA-Mexico proximity, the medical tourism industry in Tijuana is booming.
Between this city and neighboring Mexicali – also on the US border – there are about 40,000 medical consultations every month, according to numbers from the Baja California Health Services Cluster.
According to the Health Services Cluster, each day in Tijuana 350 plastic surgeries and 80 bariatric surgeries are performed (to control obesity) and dentists in Tijuana offer services like dental implants and veneers for 70% less than their colleagues in the US.
The number of procedures and the number of consultations is so high, and the experience is so good in 90% or more of the patients, that it is a very great light of attraction to come to have procedures here.
Even the Mexican and US authorities established a “medical lane” for the passage of patients and their families at a border where the crossing by car can take between two and four hours, on average.
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