Mother's Lost Weekend Pt. II -- Ensenada

NOTE: I'll get the pictures up tonight, honest.

Day Two – Ensenada. Despite every effort to sleep-in Saturday morning, my eyes opened at 6 a.m. and refused to close again. This was not supposed to happen! I was supposed to be lazy and not open my eyes before 11! Bertie Wooster would not approve of this behavior. The tea wasn’t even scheduled to arrive until 7! But this did mean that I got to watch from my stateroom window as we pulled into Ensenada. The first thing I immediately noticed was the lack of sun in Sunny Mexico. June Gloom does not respect international borders and pesters Baja California as much as Alta California. Baja California, for anyone who might be geographically challenged, is a long (like 1,000 miles long) strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez, perfect conditions for the same shore-hugging clouds that visit us in the north each June. A huge Mexican flag flying in port told us we were a foreign country, otherwise the coast could have been San Diego or Santa Barbara. After tea and toast and watching sea lions frolick in the harbor for a while, the child and I dressed and when in search of...I kid you not, gentle readers...breakfast!

For breakfast, we visited one of the formal dining rooms, having opted for the casual dining room for dinner the previous evening. The difficult thing to get used on a cruise is the wealth of choices. Meals are included in your ticket, and the staff is prepared to bring whatever you want and as much as want. Smoked salmon! Eggs Benedict! Omelettes! Pastries! The head spins at the array of foods. No wonder I forego breakfast at home! I don’t keep smoked salmon in stock and I lack the time for Eggs Benedict. This has shown me the error of my ways. Breakfast isn’t inherently evil, it has been warped and twisted by our wage-slave society from its natural place as a regular meal into this abbreviated, rushed, often over-processed, pseudo-meal; a meal with an asterisk next to its name. I resolve to work on reforming my relationship with breakfast, but that’s another blog for another day.

Our shore excursion, based on my assumption about sleeping in, wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon. This gave us time for a nicely leisurely game of mini-golf up at the very top of the ship. Again, travel proved enlightening because the ship had absolutely no problem with the notion of mixing mini-golf with a Bloody Mary. In fact, the bartenders seemed to encourage it. Nothing improves the game of golf like a Bloody Mary, and I was sure Bertie Wooster would approve. I was sure Jeeves himself would approve. We were making progress after the rocky start. Perhaps I couldn’t sleep-in until noon anymore, but I can certainly amble around a pretend golf course with a drink in my hand!

Ensenada is just 76 miles from the US border. It is a port city that caters to tourists, probably best known for two things, both bars – Papas & Beer and Hussong’s. However, Baja is also known for its big annual off-road race and is becoming better known for it’s branch of Fox Studios – which was one of the first things we noticed as we surveyed Mexico from Lido Deck earlier that morning, a strangely familiar, somewhat piratical sailing vessel docked very nearby. Later that afternoon our guide was able to confirm for us that it was none other than Capt. Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl, and had been used for filming of “Pirates of the Carribean III.” But Ensenada had a little more history than that, as our charming and fast-speaking tour guide Belen shared with us.

Ensenada was a quiet little village until an American named Jack Dempsey, very famous pugilist, opened a casino there, the Riviera Pacifico Casino and Hotel (there are rumors it was truly owned by Al Capone, but we were told Dempsey). What remains of the building is wonderful. One can imagine Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo seated at a ringside table beneath the brightly painted ceiling and stunning chandlers. Of course, gambling is no longer legal in Ensensada (I’m sure the cruise ships don’t want the competition). The building is now a cultural center where the locals have their weddings and Quinceañeras (one of which was being prepped for during our visit). Outside of the cultural center was a select assortment of vendors specializing in traditional Mexican arts and crafts, leather work, silver, ironwood, beadwork and so forth. Long story short: child saw opal pendant, vendor saw me coming, I never spent $80 so fast. Our next stop was the Santo Tomas winery, where they had displays of old-fashioned wine-making accoutrements, and explained their wine-making and bottling processes. Apparently, Mexican wines have a good reputation outside of the United States, where the Napa Valley vintners aren’t going to let wines come in from across the border. All of this was proof that there is more to Baja than Tijuana, two large bars and an off-road race. Well, sort of.

Our last stop was along the major shopping district, very near those two large bars. Here, the lovely picture our tour guide painted for us of an Ensenada that wasn’t Tijuana didn’t quite ring true. The street beggars, the children rushing up with trinkets and hands out, are an all too familiar sight to anyone who’s visited TJ. But at least, to Belen’s credit, it’s not nearly as bad in Ensenada and there are signs for a middle class and economic progress if you look for them. But on to happier thoughts than the poverty that makes so many risk crossing the border without documentation…

Here in Southern California, where Mexican and American culture has been so blended, diluted, and then reconfigured, there is, I think, a general impression that Mexican culture begins and ends with things as mariachi, folklorico, and margaritas, but of course that isn’t true, and the first shop we visited proved that quickly. The child was immediately intrigued by the alebrijes, fanciful creatures, part real and part myth, carved from wood and hand-painted in delicate patterns with bright colors. She also liked the somewhat scary, but often humorous skeleton creations for Dia De Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead celebration. In the end, for her they were just a touch too scary, and so she opted for the alebrijes. And I was so absorbed in the painted ceramics that, in the end, I couldn’t decide which to purchase and left empty-handed! The ceramic plates were nothing less than amazing. The majolicas with the intricate talavera designs, story plates, vibrant flower and animal patterns…again, too many choices! I came home confident that technology would save me, but alas! Bazar Casa Ramirez has no website. After the quality and craftsmanship on display at Bazar Casa Ramirez nothing else measured up, so we had ice cream, rested our feet and boarded the bus back to the ship.

After a nap, we changed for dinner, foregoing the “formal” night in our assigned dining room, we opted, again, for the casual atmosphere of the buffet, world of overwhelming choice and every bit as good as what was being served downstairs. One of my best memories of the cruise is seeing my picky, finicky child eat and eat and eat! She stuck to her usual routine of eating about five times a day, but small meals rather than three large meals; a bit of ice cream, some strawberries, a spoonful of melon betwixt and between breakfast, lunch, and dinner give her a steady supply of energy for walking, sight-seeing and talking, talking, talking! But this night it didn’t give her quite enough energy. The plan had been for her to attend the kids’ slumber-party to give mom a chance to drop $20 on slot machines, but about 20 minutes before the 10 p.m. start time, she confessed her immediate need for sleep. The last two days had finally taken their toll, but the best was yet to come, and those slot machines didn’t really need my $20