Road Trip - Ensenada

After Christmas we thought we would take the bus down to Ensenada and spend a couple of days. We made hotel reservations on the internet at the  San Nicholas hotel that looked good and in the area down by the marinas. We drove to the boarder and parked the car in a lot on the US side, walked across the boarder. Walking south the boarder is open with no check points, the Mexicans don't seem to care who enters their country or what they bring. The bus depot is just 3 blocks from the boarder, right next to the MacDonald's, and the bus to Ensenada runs every half an hour. US$42 for 2 people round trip. The bus is comfortable, clean, and mostly empty. The trip is about 90 minutes and we got off at the first stop in Ensenada which was a mistake, we should have stayed on until the bus depot and been a mile or so closer to our hotel. No harm done though, we got to see more of the town this way. After finding our way to the tourist section we stopped for lunch and to catch our breath and use the restrooms. Lunch was good and we continued our trek to the hotel which we found without much difficulty. The hazard with using the internet is that you may not be getting exactly what you think you're getting. The hotel was older than we thought and it was further from the waterfront and shopping area of town than we could have been if we had chosen a different hotel.

We spent the next two days playing tourist and walking all around the central area of town. On the evening of the third day I started to feel a little off,  like I was coming down with a cold, fever and aches and pains, but some aspirin seemed to overcome it and the next day we caught the bus back to Tijuana and returned home to the boat. Crossing the boarder on foot took less than an hour once we figured out  how to get from the bus depot to the boarder crossing. There are no signs for directions so we just walked in the general direction and then followed the crowds as we got near. The line was long but moved fast. The line for cars crossing into the US seemed to go for miles and did not seem to be moving, people were standing next to their cars and vendors were walking up and down the lines selling all sorts of goods. Tijuana is not the place to cross into the US in a car.