I swung by the Coronado islands to see if there was a decent anchorage for my first nite in Mexico. The only area usable was at the south of the island and that was being heavily used by commercial fishermen so I decided to give it a miss after my last experience at Catalina with late night fishing boats.
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Late in the day I pulled into Bahia Todos Santos and the Port of Ensenada. A big cruise ship was headed out the port just as I was entering and it really tested my AIS system which correctly detected a collision threat and set of all the alarms. Hope it works as well when I need it in the middle of the nite.
The cruisers guide mention a free anchorage under a giant Mexican flag right near the Melancon (boardwalk). I could see another sailboat in that area so I dropped the hook about 100yds away. The flag at Ensenada is massive, it must be about the size of a football field. The flag moves like any normal flag but in slow motion, very surreal to watch.
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I dropped the dinghy off the davits and looked around for a pier or dock to land on. I saw one small dock where the gate was open to the town so I tied up to that. A couple of young guys approached me from a boat at the dock and one of them spoke a little English. He explained the going rate for leaving a dinghy at the dock was $50 pesos (less than $5, just divide pesos by 10 to get the rough amount, right now it's 12 to the dollar. They also use the $ symbol for pesos which gets confusing). Since paying the guy would also include watching the dinghy it seemed fair so I headed over to the town a few blocks from the dock. I soon discovered all the trappings of a large city within a few blocks (even a Starbucks).
The next day I concentrated on getting my tourist visa and paperwork done with Mexican immigration. I got everything done except the check in / check out procedure for the boat with the Port Captain since it was a vacation day for him but not anyone else. I could have the paperwork done by an agent but it would cost 100's of dollars and it should be free. I was going to have to wait till Monday until he returned so I decided to stay the weekend in Ensenada and explore the city a little more.
I was been told that I couldn't stay in the anchorage and needed to tie up the boat at a marina. Turns out, I found you can anchor at Ensenada as long as you want but no one there likes it as they don't make any money out of you. Anyway one of the run down piers was run by an operation called 'Bandidos' (obviously named by a graduate of Marketing from Harvard). They offered me a deal at $20 a nite but I would need to squeeze the boat into a ridiculously small space after doing a 90 degree turn in a narrow gap. After hauling anchor and motoring over to Bandidos dock I circled a few times and decided that the small space and 20 knots of wind spelt disaster so a nearby dock that looked like a palace in comparison had a great space available and the owner was frantically waving me over. I decided to take him up on his offer and ended up at 'Marina Ensenada'. Within minutes I had met about half dozen other cruisers at the dock headed south and had the weekend planned out.
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| At Marina Ensenada. Huge Mexican flag in the background |
Over the weekend I walked all over town, found some awesome local food, restocked the pantry and made lots of new friends. I also visited the Telcel store (Mex version of AT&T) and picked up a small Nokia phone with a prepaid plan and the 3G Banda Ancha USB card. This lets me connect the laptop to the internet anywhere I see a Telcel phone signal and download 3GB of data for around $44 a month.
Ensenada was as safe as anywhere I have been. I didn't see anyone even remotely intimidating.
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| Downtown Ensenada |
I left Ensenada on Monday but decided to skip the port check in/out procedure and take my chances down the road.
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