Today is a bright, warm, sunny day – we are all happy to see the nice weather. We went to a little restaurant near the hotel for breakfast, the food was okay but the service was very slow.
Looking Out At the Surf From Our Room
We boarded the bus at 10:30 for our trip to La Bufadora, which is a natural oceanic formation in which water is forced into a tiny blowhole and spouts up into the air, sometimes as high as 100 feet; there are only 3 of these formations in the world. The height of the spout depends on the surf and today the surf is huge and there are small craft warnings out so La Bufadora should be good.
There are two roads in the Baja, there is a toll road from Tijuana to Ensenada and there is an alternate route through the mountains, we took the alternate route and what beautiful scenery, unfortunately I couldn’t get any pictures. At Ensenada we picked up the road to La Bufadora, altogether it was about 85 miles from our hotel and an interesting, pretty drive. At La Bufadora Joe parked the bus and then we had to walk about 1km to the overlook for the blowhole. Of course, being typical Mexico all the street vendors were out trying to sell their wares. It had been a long morning and everyone was looking for a restroom but guess what – the one at the outlook cost $0.50 to use and what a rip it was – one cubicle had the door lying on the floor and another one had no toilet seat – and we had to pay for this!!!!
La Bufadora was wonderful, it would shoot up about once a minute with one or two little spouts then a huge one. At one point there was a Mexican family on one of the lower lookouts and they got soaked by one of the spouts, a few from the bus got damp but fortunately no one from our bus got soaked. After seeing the spout we worked our way back through all the vendors and stopped at a restaurant for lunch then I stopped and bought a couple of postcards and John got a new hat for $5.
John & La Bufadora
La Bufadora
From there we took the scenic route to L.A. Cetto Winery where we had a tour of the winery then did some wine tasting, we tasted four wines, 2 white, 1 Champagne and a red – all quite good. John and I bought a bottle of red Zinfandel and a bottle of white Zinfandel, we didn’t taste the white but I really like it so we decided to try it as those who tasted it said it was very good. Joe then took us around the winery to an area where the owner entertains guests, there is a huge covered patio and a bull ring, all with a beautiful view of the vine yards and mountains in the background.
Lots of Wine!
Bull Ring with Vine Yards and Mountains in Background
We arrived back at the hotel about 6:30 after a very enjoyable day. Again Don & Gail asked the same group down for a drink then we walked uptown a couple of blocks to La Nesta for dinner. Joe had recommended this restaurant as being very good, and it was and also had beautiful décor. After having had both a large breakfast and lunch (at least by John and I’s standards) we weren’t starving so ended up ordering two seafood platters and sharing them with Jim & Sonia. Both platters had shrimp, calamari and a piece of fish but one was broiled and one fried so we just divided everything in four, the platters each came with soup and salad and the soup was bean so John had that and I had the salad, worked out perfectly. John & Jim also shared an appetizer of venison liver and onions – yuk!!
We arrived back at our room about 10:30, very ready for a good night’s sleep; and so ends another great gift of a day and we look forward to the mystery of tomorrow.
