Farewell Ensenada

It’s time for us to leave this intriguing city that has been our home for the last four weeks. Four weeks of exploring, of learning Spanish, of making mistakes, of making friends, of battling bureaucracy and paperwork, of establishing a rhythm. Ensenada was our first taste of Mexico, a spicy and dusty taste, as well as comforting, friendly, and gourmet taste. We’ve fallen in love with the variety that Ensenada is.

Mexico is not like any place I have ever been before. It reminds me to some extent of southeastern Europe, a juxtaposition of the grungy and the cosmopolitan, but with more chilies and color. One major first impression is the overwhelming middle class that we see here. Many – though not all – of my former students came from rural areas of Mexico and were not able to continue their education past sixth or eighth grade due to lack of money, the need to work, or the distance of the nearest high school. Most came to the United States to escape poverty and oppression and to find better work. And so I didn’t know much else about Mexico.  This month has given me a much broader glimpse (and it is just a glimpse) of this country that is the 10th largest on the planet. I’ve been able to talk about Mexican history and the linguistics of indigenous languages with my Spanish teacher, to chat with a local chef trained in France, and to practice my Spanish with an Uber driver who was trained as a lawyer but worked in the fishing industry for 15 years. We’ve visited indoor and outdoor playgrounds where our kids played and interacted with Mexican kids and got to see a few Mexican birthday parties and celebrations. All while navigating our way through cracked sidewalks and streets, taco stands, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. What a rich variety of experience Ensenada has given us. And there is still so much more of Mexico to see and live!

Baja Naval Marina has been an excellent home base. Temoc, Victor, and Carmina have been so helpful and welcoming, and we will miss their smiles. We didn’t manage to finish up our temporary residence permits while we were here (shouldn’t I have known that things always take longer than you expect), so we’ll all have to come back to Ensenada in a little while to finish things up, but the length of time we were here is what gave us the opportunity to get to know this city and a few awesome people. And I don’t really mind the “forced” road trip back to Ensenada, which will give us an opportunity to see a lot more of the inland part of this peninsula. There’s opportunity in everything, right?

And now it’s time to head down Baja’s Pacific Coast. We had two options for doing this – hopping down more slowly and anchoring at various nooks along the way, or taking bigger leaps and longer passages. We opted for the second option for two reasons: first, we are fairly wary of rolly anchorages as I don’t tend to sleep at all in them, and second, our time frame of getting to Bahia Candeleros (south of Loreto) by Christmas is prompting us to do the Pacific coast a little more quickly so that we have plenty of time to head north once we reach the Sea of Cortez. We know there is lots we will be missing along the way, but there is also lots to look forward to once we round the Capes!

We’ve already made a couple leaps, sailing into the sunset on Friday evening for a short one and a half hour trip to Punta Banda so that we could all get our sea legs back by spending a night at anchor. We then jumped off onto our first overnight passage as a family, motoring in 2 knots of wind to Isla San Martin, where we arrived at 7:00 a.m. We dropped the hook, and I took the kids ashore to play on the while Tom and Sara caught up on sleep. My nap came later. This little volcanic island is a slice of paradise, at least to visit for two days. We played in the surf. We traded beer and cookies for eight lobsters from the six local fisherman who live here, who are, in fact, the only inhabitants of this remote island. We ran around on the sand and got way too much sun. We fished from the boat. We talked to the harbor seals. We enjoyed this nook.

Now it’s time to press on, and we leave shortly for our next long passage: two nights and and a day and a half to Turtle Bay. The kids are excited. We are excited. And there’s wind. So away we go.

The pictures below are of Ensenada and a few of the Islas Todos Santos, which are two islands ten miles off the coast of Ensenada, where we spent a day with our friends from Blue Heron.