Chez Mattiouz

4 September 2007

Baja California vacations

Posted by Matthieu under: Travels; Vacations

We flew from Boston to San Diego to meet Pascal on the Friday night. Then, Saturday morning, we took the train to San Ysidro, crossed the border by feet, took a cab to Tijuana’s airport and grabbed a rental car. That was relatively painless and only 1h30 after leaving San Diego we were driving on the road of Baja California.

The first step in our trip was Tecate. Well to be honest there was not much to see down there. It is a nice quiet town, people were friendly and the food was good, but we could definitely have skipped the day in town. On Sunday morning we left Tecate to drive south through the Valle de Guadalupe. We enjoyed the scenery and made a side stop to one of the many wine exploitations for wine tasting. It was fun and relaxing after a few hours driving (although we were not too fond of wine itself). We stopped for lunch in Ensenanda and kept driving a little more to La Bufadora, a very touristy little place on the rocky pacific coast. There we saw a sea geyser made by ocean wave, and we walked around the main street packed with little “crafts & junk” shops. We made our way back toward Ensenada and, after picking up a hotel, we went relaxing at the Punta Banda beach for a while. Finally we went out to dinner for Pascal birthday and we ate a huge (and delicious) seafood platter!

Monday was a long driving day. We spent many hours in the car driving through amazing scenery in the central desert of Baja California. In the late afternoon we arrived at Bahia de Los Angeles and were more than happy to go for a swim in the nice water of the sea of Cortez. Tuesday was a relaxing day: snorkeling, reading, laying, swimming and even a little bit of windsurf .

On Wednesday morning we woke up very early to go fishing. We got on the boat around 6.30am and spent the whole morning at sea. We fished for a couple of hours in the islands of Bahia de Los Angeles, it was crazy we barely had to wait for fishes to bite. It was like somebody was at the bottom hooking the fishes onto our hooks! After filling half of a cooler with fish we decided to stop fishing and went for a ride. Our captain brought us to a small island where a lot of sea lions were hanging out. We asked him if we could go look around for dolphins, he said we could try. On our way we saw a whale (from far) and finally we spotted some dolphins. We were lucky, they were hundreds of them and they played with us, swimming in front of the boat and jumping around. On our way back we stopped for about 30 min to snorkel in some very clear water, full of colorful fishes. This morning was excellent and after we got back to our place the afternoon was dedicate to laziness. We also grilled a lot of fresh fish for lunch and dinner .

We left Bahia de Los Angeles early on Thursday morning. But before heading back to Ensenada we took a side trip to see some cave paintings. Literally a side trip… just a dirt path by the side of the main road. After an hour of driving in the dirt we almost turned around as there was no sign of paintings and no indication how far they were. But as we were getting ready to turn around we reached the site, a big cliff standing in the middle of thousands of cacti. We climbed and walk around, trying to discover as many paintings as we could for a while, until we decided to head back. We drove back on the dirt path and finally on the paved road for the rest of the day. We arrived in touristy Ensenada in the late afternoon.

Friday was Kristy’s requested “shopping day” . We all took advantage of Ensenada’s shop to buy crafts, jewelery and souvenirs. On Saturday we started our journey back to the US. We spent some time body surfing inthe ocean in the morning, ate good seafood in Puerto Nuevo and drove back to Tijuana where we dropped the car off in the afternoon. Then we grabbed a cab back to the border and crossed to “the other side”. We had to wait in line for a good 30-45 min at the Tijuana border. Last step was to go through the custom, Pascal and I went through easily, no question asked. Then one of the officer asked a few question to Kristy, who was taken on the spot:

• Officer: Where are you going?
• Kristy: mmm… I don’t know, San Diego?
• Officer: What did you bring?
• Kristy: Nothing… huh my stuff…

And they let her through, I’ll remember those answers next time I need to fill an immigration form in a plane

San Diego tip: How to pick up the trolley for free from the airport? Grab the budget shuttle pretending you have a reservation, the Middletown trolley station is steps from the rental place.

Trip Facts :

• Length: 10 days
• Distance: 1016 Miles - 1636 Km

Money Facts :

• Food and drinks: 804$ (26.8$ per day per person)
• Hotels: 925$ (30.8$ per night per person)
• Transportation
• Cab rides: 55$
• Train: 15$
• Car rental: 421$
• Gas : 88$
• Toll: 11$
• Fun
• Boat ride: 175$
• Boogie boards: 24$
• Shopping: ~80$
• Total spent (without flights) : 2598$ (86.6$ per day per person)

Flights:

• 429$ Boston - San Diego, for Kristy and Matt
• Pascal got free tickets

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