Tijuana/San Diego - Day 5

Today we drove to Ensenada, a tourist town south of Rosarito. There are two roads to Ensenada, a toll road and a free road. On the way there we took the free road, though the roads run right beside each other for half the way there. It is at the point where they separate that things get interesting, as the free road starts curving through a number of large hills/small mountains and small villages. The road was very narrow and steep, with no shoulders or guard rails and we kept meeting semis coming from the other direction. I was a little scared and more than glad that I wasn't driving.

We survived the road and arrived at Ensenada around lunch time. We weren't sure where we were going to stop for lunch, as we did not have a lot of information about restaurants in Ensenada. In the end, we played it safe and went to McDonald's. Mexican McDonald's are very similar to ours, except there are fewer food options, the Coke was sickeningly sweet, though it may have been Coke Zero, and the kid's playland consisted of three video games. I'm pretty certain the video games were boxes containing an N64 with an arcade style controller hooked up to the machine, as the games were regular N64 games. The biggest pain was that the bathroom at McDonald's was for customers only, so you had to show your receipt to get the door unlocked. That meant that Sandra and Colette took all four kids to get their diapers changed at once, just to prevent us from having to ask for the bathroom to be opened multiple times.

After lunch, we walked down to the harbour, where there was a cruise ship docked. We wandered past the regular boats, and were approached a couple of times regarding taking a ride out around the harbour. Rick was interested in doing that, but the first price we were given was $75, which was a bit expensive. A little while later the same boat operator came walking up to us on the dock and said that he had some other people already on the boat, so we could all ride for $10. I guess he just wanted $75 in total for a trip. Xander wasn't very happy at first, due to the loudness of the engine and the fact that the operator had to lift him on board, as Sandra wasn't able to step from the dock to the boat carrying him. Passing the cruise ship calmed him down. The big draw of the boat trip was a bunch of derelict ships that were strung together in the harbour and used as a habitat for a large number of sea lions. They were on top of and inside the old boats, and our boat stopped right beside a large number of sea lions sleeping in the sun. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, though Xander was quite excited by the cranes and semis that were on the container ship unloading dock.

Once we were off the boat, we just wandered around Ensenada for a little bit. Evan was extremely tired and would not go to sleep in the stroller, so we walked along with him screaming as loud as he possibly could. I found the zoning laws, or lack thereof interesting, as the main street along the harbour had a strip club next door to a Nextel store and a fairly seedy looking bar next door to a FedEx store. We walked back to the van, where we stored the strollers and walked to a nearby street where we had been harassed regarding horse drawn carriage rides. (Note: I do mean harassed - they shout at you from the other side of the street.) The tour just took us around the main harbour road, but it was a nice and relaxing ride.

We then left Ensenada and went to a tide pool area that Mike had shown to Rick. Sandra had confirmed that low tide was around 4:00pm, which was roughly when we arrived. I thought the entire thing was a bust at first, as the kids had fallen asleep on the way there and were extremely cranky when we woke them up. I also could not find any sea animals except for some anemones in the shallow pools of water. However, after dumping a screaming Evan on Sandra, Xander and I started tossing small rocks into the water. As he dropped one into a pool, I noticed a moving shell. I looked closer and saw a whole bunch of moving shells, as there were lots of hermit crabs moving around in the water. When everyone else arrived, Rick and I carefully picked them up out of the water and placed them on a nearby rock so the kids could watch them scurry back into the water. The kids had woken up by this point, so everyone had a good time.

Our last stop of the day was a hotel restaurant back in Rosarito for supper. It was extremely good. Our waiter was very friendly, especially with the kids, and the food was awesome. Sandra had beef tacos, I had chicken enchiladas and Xander had a quesadilla. The beef tacos were a lot like the ones from the taco stand, chopped beef in a soft tortilla, though these had lettuce, tomatoes and cheese (which looked like goat cheese or feta cheese). Again, they weren't very spicy, but a plate of peppers and onions was delivered to the table. The enchiladas were spicy, and I added some hot sauce to them, which made them extremely good. I'm not certain how authentic the hot sauce was, though, as it was from California. The entire meal was also extremely cheap - it was only $41 for four adult meals, one kid meal and six drinks.

It sounds like we are actually relaxing tomorrow, as the kids are becoming difficult to manage due to the lack of naps and disrupted schedules. On Friday we'll head to San Diego, possibly to Legoland, after which we will stay the night in a hotel before flying out Saturday morning.