harryfat1

Alexa pointed out that the rings you see in the ocean are fish farms. They raised fish here to sell to Japan and Asia as part of the sushi and regular fish trade

As we round the bay, we look back at the harbor where the cruise ship is docked This area is nice. They should build some sort of rest area platform for people to get off the shuttle and take some pictures and maybe they can sell some drinks/snacks here

Once we left the busy city area, the scenery turned more rural. Alexa said they grow a lot of asparagus here for exports so if you bought some asparagus at your local grocery store and it says “product of Mexico”, it could come from Ensenada

We waited for a few minutes as the bus filled up with other cruise passengers Here’s our tour guide – Alexa. Yeah, as in the name of Amazon’s virtual assistant. I was tempted to ask her if her family has any Amazon devices at home and if they had to change that to a different “wake” name… The gal is pleasant and energetic. Spoke perfect English with no accents. Gave us a lot of info about the area and the Blow Hole itself. Alexa said this is the one beach the locals go to. Ensenada is not known for its beaches so you won’t find any tours that take you to a beach like in Cozumel. But they do have horseback riding

In my previous visits to Ensenada with my parents back in the 90s or with the boys when they were really young in their strollers, I never made it to the Blow Hole. So this time, I made it a top priority to go there So the way it works is after they drop you off downtown as part of the $4/pp shuttle, within 10 feet of where you exit the shuttle, they have tables at the park area where they will collect the $25/pp for the Blow Hole tour. You pay them (in USD – cash) and then be directed to another shuttle bus 40 feet away. The umbrella area is where you pay for the Blow Hole tour after you get off the white shuttle bus Then after payment, the guide will tell you to board the first white bus in the front This white shuttle bus will be the bus that takes us to the Blow Hole This is downtown Ensenada. Not much has changed in the past 20+ years since my first cruise here. Highly recommend you do some sort of tour while in town. I have walked the downtown area before. Not worth writing (texting) home about...

So here is the $4/pp shuttle I discussed earlier. Pay the dude the cash to get on board and keep the return ticket to get back to the shuttle. The timestamp is 9:54. This will be important at the back end of the discussion. I have been in the shuttles in my previous visits to Ensenada so I know the spiel they will give as soon as the van clears the gate of the cruise port. The dude will try to sell you the tour to the Blow Hole (La Bufadora) from their company. The price now is $25/pp. Earlier in the year, the YouTuber person said it was $20 so inflation has hit Mexico as well. If you want to price compare, you can get a similar tour to the blowhole online on Viator for $35/pp or through your buddies at RCI for $50+. I did my price comparison before leaving and I thought about booking the Viator tour if I wanted a tour locked secured but since the family isn’t a morning crowd and from previous visits, I know they have lots of shuttles that will take you to the Blow Hole so I felt comfortable on the last minute booking. Dude selling the tour to people here for $25/pp

Thanks. Good to be back home. It was a tiring weekend trip. I had a headache at work on Monday after coming back late Sunday night. Getting too old to be driving long distances. Few pictures from the weekend Now California is land of $7/gallon gas - yes, that's expensive by US standards for our overseas friends reading this

Thanks for the quick responses. Too bad I didn't take pictures of the dog as the officer was taking the dog from person to person while we walked down the pathway to exit the area. Old man memory in me wants to say that dog was a German Sphered but I wouldn't put any money on that. If I encounter something like this going forward, I will be sure to take a picture of it (might get yelled at by someone...)

So the Ensenada port is built where you exit the area on the broadside of the ship – do not go past the Bow or the Aft and do not collect $200 (Old Monopoly reference). You exit the ship and you go toward the red buildings on the side of the ship to either join your preplanned excursions or walk out of the compound where it says EXIT (they only tell you 3 times in case you can't see very well) Greeting us at the Exit pathway is a police offer with a sniffing dog. Each person’s bag had to be sniffed by the dog before we were allowed to exit. Are those drug-sniffing or bomb-sniffing dogs? Anyone know?

Seeing a Mooring Line is like a moth to flames. It has that magical whisper feel that you see in the movies “Come here and take a picture of me...” with the character walking like a zombie toward the Line... Do you see that gap opening to the right? That’s where you do the now world-famous “Patti Maneuver” and sneak in and smile and point at the camera. Except there are no sea lions. All been chased away by the workers As discussed previously, had to do a long trek just to go to the front of the ship and then walk all the way back as the family stood there being bored. Wouldn't do it if it was raining...

We made it off the ship. Unlike their East Coast brethren at Cozumel, Ensenada is much more restrictive of access to part of the dock as you can see there are barricades everywhere. Can’t access the front or the Aft of the ship easily. Time to visit the Crazy aunt in the basement as we made sure she was well-fed before we headed out (aka photo session with shipboard photographers with port pictures) we saw other people visiting their relatives in their basements as well

Done with breakfast. Back to the cabin to get the backpack ready for our one and only port excursion for this cruise. Artwork at RP as we made our way to the gangway

OK, it’s 8 AM, time to head back to the cabin round up the family, and head for breakfast And guess what, this being day 4, they opened up the “secret vault” and had the smoked salmon out with you having to do the secret handshake before getting some. All you can eat smoked salmon My breakfast - got the salmon with a plain waffle Here’s something I missed not having from the Princess cruise – customized Belgian waffles. On the Majestic Princess, they have a dedicated Waffles dude who makes Belgian waffles with various toppings similar to an omelet station. I like mine with strawberries. Much better than the RCI plain variety. Here's the Princess version with the dude makes the waffle fresh in front of you and adds the topping from the list Final Product: Anyway, back to RCI as they ran short on fruits so there was a line as the worker replenished them with the trays underneath

REALLY? I took this picture? I must be getting old as I don't recall. I have taken probably over 100,000 travel pictures throughout the years and I would rank that as a top 1% "wow' factor amongst all the pictures and I don't even remember taking it....

A couple more pictures and then it's time to go down and gather the fam for breakfast This is the shuttle to get into town I mentioned in previous post Last Line picture

We have an excursion in mind but if you are in town and don’t want to do much away from the ship, I have seen YouTube videos where people from the cruise walked to where the huge flag pole is as they have shops and an open square area for people to hang out From the flag pole, you can walk a bit more to get to downtown or you can take the shuttle here for $4/pp/roundtrip. Technically it’s $3 there and $1 back as I read somewhere that if you walk to the town area and get hot and tired and don’t want to walk back, you can catch the shuttle back for $1. They have you as a “captive prisoner” when getting off the port if you are new to the area, you have no clue where’s what so you pay the $4/pp. But once you realize you can walk the distance, they will only charge you $1 back if you don’t have the return ticket. I have always liked the "miniature effect". Same picture but with software adjustment for tilt-shift look

As discussed previously, Ensenada Harbor blocks off access to the Mooring Line so we deal with whatever we are given. At least you get to see the dudes working hard to secure the lines Dudes working and chasing away Patti’s sea lions. The water splash was a couple that jumped in. There are a couple more left by the red arrow but they are soon chased away as well

Quiet pool deck area. No chair hogs early in the morning and on a port day

Sorry, couldn't tell you as we never spent time inside the pub. We are not drinkers and especially since my younger son is still underage, we didn't spend time at any of the drinking establishments.

Ensenada Harbor. A bit of quick geography here for those not familiar with Ensenada. The city is located about 80 miles south of the US/Mexico border. Besides the twice-a-week short cruise sailings from southern CA (3 and 4-night sailings), the port stop is used for many repo cruises as they need to add in a foreign port when they sail to/from Hawaii or up and down the California coast. The cruise lines either use Vancouver/Victoria up north or Ensenada down south during winter when sailing to Canada is not a viable option. Wiki says Ensenada is the second busiest Mexico port and that surprises me at first, but if I think about it, it makes sense as the trade with Asia needs to find the closest port in the northwest of Mexico. They need to import stuff from Asia as well as export their goods and this is the closest big port. One claim to fame for Ensenada is that they think they invented the drink Margarita. You can read Wiki on this as different places also want to lay claim to inventing Margarita. Another claim to fame is the locals believe they invented the fish taco. The famous Anthony Bourdain came here once and filmed an episode at Ensenada eating fish tacos. One last big claim to fame is the Blow Hole outside of town. The Blow hole is the water geyser where water shoots up through the cave openings. You can read up on the science part of it but the one in Ensenada is supposed to be the second largest in the world and that’s where we are going to see today.

Haha, you borrowed this picture from someone else. I didn't take this picture. I wish I had...

Not much happening at 7:35 on the RP The floor sign at the elevator reminds you that it’s Thursday to the rest of the world but as far as you are concerned, it’s Day 4 of the cruise Rare empty elevator where I can take an unobstructed view of the listings on each deck The Solarium pool is not open yet at 7:37

Since this is Day 4 of the short cruise, today is the last day so we will queue up the video as we say Goodbye to the crew later today But we are not done-done yet. We have a full day of cruise left, including the Mexican port of Ensenada. Officially the ship docks at 8 AM so I tried to get up to the top deck to see the ship coming in port. The family being late risers didn’t want to get up early so I was on my own. Nobody in the hallway. Have you ever wondered if you were a snail, how long would the ship’s corridor would look like?

August 10, (Thursday) Day 4 - Ensenada As always here is the compass scan for the day

Cool pictures of the various tenders. Thanks for digging into the archives for these. I especially like the classic cruise line picture of the Norway. Definitely under the category of “they don’t build these anymore” Princess Cruise lines used to attempt to appeal to the families by having a smaller mini golf area like what you showed on the Coral and the Grand but on their newer class ships (the Royal Class), they totally abandoned the golf concept. Not interested in attracting families in this class of ships. The ship looked to be docked very far at Maui. Must be a long tender ride. I would need to dig deep into my own archives as I want to say I was in one of these lifeboats previously as a tender as I remembered thinking to myself that I’m glad I won’t have to be spending anytime in the lifeboats as they were not very comfortable.