Marissa Lang and Jessica Flores had a Mexican adventure on Tuesday. The two packed water bottles, cameras and equipment and drove from Tucson to Nogales, Ariz., around 10 a.m. Lang and Flores were researching “dental tourism,” in which Americans travel to Mexico to seek less expensive dental care.

The pair parked their car and walked across the border into Mexico. Lang, who had never been to the country before, said crossing was an exciting moment and was much easier than she expected.

Lang, 20, and Flores, 25, breezed through the checkpoints, escaped many offers for taxis and walked toward the office of the dentists they were going to interview.

“The second we turn the corner and we can see the street, it was like: dentist, pharmacy, orthodontist, dentist, dentist, pharmacy, orthodontist, like everywhere,” Lang said. “I knew there were lots of dentist places in Nogales because I looked it up online. But to visually see an entire street packed with dentists was really weird and overwhelming.”

At the office, Lang and Flores had a productive shoot (Lang took photos and Flores shot video). The dentist, Jose Saturno, was cooperative and enthusiastic. Lang said the interview was going well, when “in walks the mayor of Nogales, Arizona.”

Turns out the mayor, Octavio Garcia-Von Borstel, gets his teeth checked in Mexico, she said.

While walking around Nogales, Lang and Flores, wearing their New York Times Student Journalism Institute press badges, became “instant celebrities.”

“We have all these people coming up to us saying, ‘Que haces? Que haces?’ What are you doing? What are you doing?” Lang said.

Lang said she explained her participation with the Institute to local residents. One man in particular was really excited when he spotted the press badge.

“Oh, New York Times?” Lang recalled him saying. The man then asked if she was Mexican and she replied that she was actually Ecuadorian.

“Two hours later we were back by the border and this other guy was like, in English, ‘Oh, you’re the Ecuadorian reporter from The New York Times!” she said, surprised at how quickly “good news” spreads in Nogales, Mexico.

Later Tuesday evening, Lang and Flores were stopped at a checkpoint in Arizona not far from the border by law enforcement agents.

“They knock on the window, we roll it down and they go, ‘Are you American citizens?’” Lang said.

She and Flores were exhausted at this point and Flores “didn’t hear them right,” Lang said. “And she goes, ‘No, it’s a rental.’ And I was like, ‘The car, not our citizenship.’”

The officer was not amused. Instead he and a dog, perhaps sniffing for drugs, walked around the car, then returned to the driver-side window and asked if Lang or Flores had illegal narcotics in the vehicle. They said no and he then told them to “go ahead” and “have a nice day,” Lang said.

“I was tempted to be like, ‘No, we only have legal narcotics in this car,” Lang said. “But I thought he wouldn’t like that either, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Salvador Rodriguez and Jamie Klein