Blogs from Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, North America

While looking online at the different shore excursions Carnival offers for Ensenada, I kept bypassing the City & Shopping Tour because, quite frankly, the name didn’t sound very interesting at all. I am glad that I pressed further and read the description because once I did I found we would be traveling by bus to three different stops in three hours. The first stop was the Riviera Del Pacifico, “a glamorous resort and casino during the roaring 20s.” Our second stop would find us visiting Bodegas de Santo Tomas, “the oldest winery in Mexico and taste its famous wines.” And finally, our tour would leave us some time for “browsing around the city’s main shopping district” before returning to the ship. Now, that sounds way more interesting than the name of this excursion implies. So, the ... read more

Hola from Mexico (that's 'hello from Mexico' for those of you that don't speak Spanish).. Just as I was becoming comfortable outside of my comfort zone we head into Baja..... Setting off from San Diego after 3 days of rest, sending stuff home, buying maps on Mexico and stocking up on toiletries we were ready to go. It's great cycling into a big city but it's even better cycling out of one. We were quite anxious about the ride ahead of us having heard so many bad, really bad, reports about the killings, kidnapping and robberies happening in the area where we were headed. We decided to avoid Tijuana where alot of the news reports focus and instead head inland, over the mountains, to a town called 'Tecate". David's now group leader and I'm second in ... read more

95% of Americans wouldn't dare cross the southern border and enter in Mexico. What did we do? Exactly the opposite. With the advice from Kyle's friend at the Mexican Consulate we decided to embark into the unknown. We were headed into dangerous territory where we could've been killed by crossfire from rival drug cartels, or perhaps even kidnapped or robbed while driving through Tijuana. With the negative stigma associated with Mexico, we told our parents we may not come back home in one piece(note: only one set of parents were advised of this :)) The drive down from OC was a breeze. It took us a little over two and half hours to get from Costa Mesa to Ensenada. We left around 8 am and arrived around 10:45ish. Navigating through the border and getting to the ... read more

Ansa and Echo left San Diego on Wednesday, December 2 bound for Puerto Salina, BCS, which is a small marina about 20 miles north of Ensenada. The sail south was pleasant with light winds so we motored in the morning and in the afternoon there was enough wind to put up the spinnakers and float on down at about 5 knots with 7 to 10 knots of wind. The marina here is new and there is not much else here other than vacation homes. There is one motel/cantina, but otherwise no stores or other businesses. The little town here, La Salina, is basically a summer beach town. A small group of US expats seem to have settled here for retirement. I have included a photo of the marina's hotel/restaurant which is still being built. It will ... read more