Ensenada Sign at La Bufadora

Yesterday afternoon I returned from Ensenada, where I spent a couple of days with my brother Dan. Unfortunately, the long drive left me with a bit of a sore throat, which I fought by sucking Ricola lozenges. It made me think that I have to scale down some of my travel ambitions, as I am no longer as young as I used to be. But that doesn’t mean that I am falling out of love with travel: It just means I have to do everything more slowly, in stages.

I met my brother in front of one of the San Ysidro parking lots by the border crossing. He drove down I-15 from the Coachella Valley, while I took the I-405, the I-5, and the I-805. Because of heavy traffic and several accidents on the highway, it took me four hours to reach the border.

At that point, Dan took the wheel to cross the border and take the scenic 1-D Quota Road past Rosarito Beach to Ensenada. I was relieved to be just a passenger for that final leg of the trip, as driving in Mexico could be a challenge.

Fortunately, the weather on Tuesday and Wednesday was perfect: breezy and in the low 70s Fahrenheit (21 to 26° Celsius). For some reason there weren’t many American tourists in town, so it felt as if we had the whole place to ourselves. We were surprised to see that a lot of the businesses were closed, until we realized that most of the Yanqui invaders came from cruise ships like The Navigator of the Seas and various Carnival Cruise liners. In fact, only as we were leaving town yesterday morning did we see a liner loosing boat people on the streets of Ensenada.

For the next few days, I will describe in some detail about what we did, what we ate (hey, we went down there for fish tacos—and we were not disappointed), and what we saw.