14 September 2007
Our Trip to Mexico
Posted by matthieu under: Uncategorized
We went to Mexico for vacation August 11-19th. It was a relaxing and beautiful vacation that was well deserved 
We flew from Boston to San Diego to meet Pascal on Friday night. Then, Saturday morning, we took the train to San Ysidro, crossed the border by foot, 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 stop in our trip was Tecate. 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 have skipped that 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 was fun shopping, small tables set up everywhere with lots of fun things to buy! We also saw a sea geyser made by ocean wave. We made our way back toward Ensenada, checked into a small hotel, then went to Punta Banda beach for a while. To finish out the night we went out to dinner for Pascal’s 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 (Harry Potter), laying, swimming and even a little bit of windsurf 
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On Wednesday morning we woke up very early to go fishing. It was a small boat with a local as the captain. 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, the fish there were very hungry!!! We did not have towait for fish to bite. After filling half of a cooler with fish we decided to stop fishing and went for a boat tour of the near by islands. Our captain brought us to a small island where a lot of sea lions were hanging out. On our way we saw a whale (from far) and TONS of dolphins! There were hundreds of them and they swam in front of the boat and jumped right next to us! On our way back we stopped for about 30 min to snorkel in some very clear water, full of colorful fish. After we got back to our place the afternoon was dedicated to laziness. We grilled our fresh fish for lunch and dinner 
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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. After checking out the cave paintings and sweating in the desert sun, 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 shops to buy crafts, jewelery and souvenirs. On Saturday we started our journey back to the US. We spent some time body surfing in the 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 questions asked. Then one of the officer asked a few questions 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…
Haha….we spend our last afternoon on a beach in San Diego…body surfing and soaking up the sun!
