Mexico - Rosarito

Mexico was our first trip together as a family of 5. Since our marriage, my parents were in London for a year and later Ketakee moved to Ohio and we had not been out as a family. This time Ketakee was back for her summer break and we decided to take her out for a weekend; Destination: MEXICO.

We had doubts about driving conditions, hygine and abo

ve all safely but we took heart from the fact that my dad's friend, who had visited Rosarito just a few weeks ago, had raved about his trip.

Day 1: La Bufadora.

After a leisure start from our home in Irvine, we headed towards the Mexican border via

the 5 and 805. I had more expectations from the Mexican border - security checks, passport inspection, car inspection etc, but to my surprise there just wasn't any inspe

ction. No checks what so ever. It was as simple as entering regional park in Orange County, hardly the kind of stuff expected when crossing an

 international border. I had studied the directions and road signs thoroughly on the internet before the trip, so I had little trouble finding my way to the 1-D Sceneic Router to Rosarito. We decided to skip Rosarito for now and head South to Ensenada and La Bufadora.

The drive towards Ensenada is plesant along the 1-D toll road. Beautiful expanse of blue ocean on the right althought I was a bit disappointed that the beaches along the way are not readily accessible. There were shops, resturants and mostly houses. Dustly local roads would lead to the beach but we were afraid to leave our car unattended and go on the beach. I guess I have been spoilt by living in the US to expect a parking lot next to every beach. So we stopped at a few look outs but didn't go on the beach itself.

For lunch we stopped at 'LA Fonda' at LA Mission exit as I had read online that it was a great place. The view is great, yes. We sat on the patio overlooking the ocean, sipping margeritas

and beer, with cool breeze flowing over us. The service is very slow and the food is very american. We felt like we had eaten at Chilies. However, the nachos and salsa were quite authentic. We really liked those. If you are looking for authentic Mexican foold, I wouldn't recommend this joint - May be for a quick drink. One can access the beach from here and there is security outside to attend to the cars.

After an extended stop for Lunch, we headed further south. The scenery remains mostly the same until you reach Ensenada. This a lively city and busy as the cruise ships bring in passengers.

 It was crowded and we decided not to stop and headed straight for La Bufadora. The road to La Bufadora goes thru local streets. Its not the express freeway we had used until that point bu

t there are signs along the way. We even asked locals for directions if we thought we had gone too far.Mumbaikars will have sense of dejavu along these streets.....they are exactly like Mumbai about 5 yrs ago. I felt we were going down Kurla-Andheri Road. A two lane road, followed by a dusty unpaved path and then shops. All kinds of shops - pottery, auto mechanic, steel welders, storage, furniture, everything is for sale.

Finally, after going thru some villages, shaks, towns we reached La Bufadora. We parked just outside the street that leads towards cliff and headed thru the main shopping street. We decided to stop later for now we wanted to go to the

 man attraction we had come to visit.

La Bufadora

which literally means a

 'Snorter', is turely remarkable. A sea-cave, jsut below the water surface, with air trapped deep inside. As a new wave approaches, the air inside the cave is compressed to a point it can't be compressed any more and it expands to throw the water jetting out of the cave sometimes as high as 80 mts into the air accompained by a loud snorting noise. My dad informed me that there are only 3 such caves in the world; this one being second in terms of the height reached by the jetting sea water. The crown is taken by one in Australia.

We spent quite sometime watching this remarkable architecture of nature obviously taking

alot of pictures and videos. Then we spent a lot of time shopping just outside La Bufadora. The ladies bought purses, hand bands, earrings, necklaces etc. My dad and

 I were on a hunt for unique blow-shells. He had searched for these in Goa but hadn't found any here we found there only for $12. We bargained the price to $10.

My me

morable purchase: a cactus taco! Who'd have thought cactus is edible...and trust me it was good !!

It was getting late and we had alot of ground to cover to reach Rosarito so without any additional stops we headed back to our hotel. At the hotel we checked-in to our room and found it to be below-par. We had paid $250 for the accomadation but the room was no better than a 3

star hotel. There was one bedroom on the main floor adjoining the bathroom. A living room that had a sofa-cum-bed, tv and a small kitchen. Finally, a loft above the room had 2 more full-sized beds.

We had great view though. Our room directly overlooked the pier at Rosarito. We didn't waste anytime and went straight for dinner as the entertainment was about to begin.

It was a buffet style mexican food with complementory margarita. The food was OK, nothing to write home about. The entertainment a show called, 'Viva Mexico', was good. The dancers performed tricks and many traditional mexican dances. The show had got the crowd going but we were too tired for it.

We ended the day with a nigh-walk on Rosarito streets. We walked right past Papa-beer an

d Mango clubs which were only steps away from our hotel. There were enough people on the street to make us feel safe - we weren't the only ones. Still our senses were hightened and we were on guard. The streets weren't well lit, there was a few drunkards and in general we had the phobia of being in an unknown 3rd world country.

Day 2: Rosarito, Taco Search and Crossing the Border

On day 2, we decided to take it easy. We got up early and went on the beach. The beach was

 very quite in the morning with cool breeze and even colder water. We wanted to enter the water but didn't dare to do so after the cool temparature. People and vendors were slowly making their way to the beach. We stolled for for sometime and took a lot of pictures. The photographer within Ketakee has suddenly sprung alive and she was putting alot of effort into taking

 her pictures - Truth be told her pictures did come out good in the end.

After a long walk we went on the Rosarito Pier. The Peir is pretty long compared to

the ones in Southern CA. Ketakee and Mumma continued to take pictures. It was almost 10am by now, some people had come to the pier for fishing. In fact some people had half a bucket of fish by the time I reach the end of the pier.

Just when the 'morning by the beach' was going perfectly, some local Mexican company setup their shop on the beach near the pier and started barring songs at the highest volume. It just destroyed the serene calmness of a beach in the morning. I could no longer hear the waves crashing on the beach just some Mexican singer's voice. If that was not enough some person in that booth took up the mike and started marketing or something trying to pull people. Oh my god...there went my 'morning by the beach'. I left with the impression that Mexican people love loud music no matter what time of the day. Personally, I like to stay calm in the morning and the loud music made me irritated.

We checked-out of our hotel and decided to drive along some local roads we had seen the

 previous day from the toll road. The local roads were a bit ragged and narrow but were a nice experience. It was as if I am back in Nagaon (my native place in India - although, I have to say the quality of roads in Nagoan in the last few years is much better than these). Along the way we stopped for pictures and some scenic look outs. For lunch we stopped at a small village just outside Rosaretto. As we drove in to this place, there were people outside the hotels/resturants soliciting us to come into their resturant for lunch.

We picked a hotel that seemed to have

decent view of the Ocean. We picked a spot on the balcony over looking ocean.....it was a gorgeous view. Blue sea, quite waves, nice sunshine and beer in hand :) Whats more - a couple of guys with their

 guitar stopped by my dad paid them to play a few songs for us. PERFECT!! I dont remember the name of the place we stopped at but they had the best tortilla I have ever had.....for the first time I realized even Tortilla can be so tasty that they can be eaten by themselves!!

Post Lunch, we started to head back home. Ketakee wanted to eat the cactus taco so we stopped

at a couple of places along the way. We asked a few people but they didn't seem to know about any cactus taco. That was exiting and scary - either I had a rare delicay or something wierd no

one has every heard of. Either way, I wasn't rolling over with stomach aches and I really liked my Cactus Taco the pevious day, so all is well. Enroute our cactus taco search we ate some freshly made tacos, the lady actually made the soft taco from dough right in front of us!! For just $1....OMG....This was taco heaven. Just because she was making them fresh we bought a few more from her.

Finally, having given up our search we headed home. We took the toll road back so getting into Tijuana wasn't any problem but construction along the highway and detours threw us off and we were lost on streets on Tijuana; luckly we found our way.As expected we ran into heavy traffic, this one is worse than 405. As we inched towards  the boarder, there were more shops and more shopping opportunity. Initially, the ladies tried

to look for something from the car but the heat, boredom of sitting thru traffic and anticipation of crossing the border and going home got to them and they gave up. We even made one last attempt to find Cactus Taco to no avail. Finally, we reached the border, passports checked and off we go ... It felt so good to be back in the US.

Trip to Mexico was nostalgic. It felt like going back to India sans the language barrier. It many ways India after the economic boom is much much better. But still the feeling of being in

 'Mumbai like' place was great. Images of burfavora, lunch by the ocean and my favorite 'cactus taco' will stay with me for years to come!

by Kartik Gupte