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We timed our departure from San Diego to arrive in Ensenada early in the morning, with the intent of having the full day for check-in's with the various Mexico agencies. As luck would have it, the wind more than cooperated, and we arrived a bit before sunrise. So, we hovered around the bay a bit, avoiding a cruise ship and other commercial traffic. After first light, we entered Cruiseport Marina and tied to their "mega-yacht" pier, which is just a long pier, and waited until the office opened. Once we obtained our dock space, we ventured off for the "official" formalities of checking into Mexico. Neither of us knew what to expect. Lot's of officialdom, and lots of rubber stamping of documents. Go to one window, fill out papers, go to the bank window and pay, back to the first window and get papers rubber stamped. Repeat 3 or 4 times for each agency- Immigration, Port Captain, Temporary Import Permit, Customs.

Once settled in, we decided to venture to the grocery store- the 'super-mercado'. We got directions from the marina office, and off we went. We actually did fairly well in communicating and buying items at the drug store and grocery. A few days later, we decided to head via bus to Home Depot and Wal-Mart. As there were two cruise ships in, and we didn't know what bus to take, we opted for a cab to the stores. Home Depot didn't carry the hose fittings we needed- and we had a good time communicating with the young staffer there. He didn't speak English and besides us not knowing Spanish (and we forgot our 'spanish for cruisers' translation book- he didn't want to give up. We found some hose and a valve, and held them together- as we needed a fitting to join them. Nope, don't carry those. Next, we wanted a female garden hose fitting with a 1/2" male fitting on the other end. Nope, none of those either. So we decided to go to WalMart for some additional supplies. Because it was almost lunch time, we looked for a place to grab a bite to eat. Aha... El Burger King. Not that we wanted to eat at an American fast food joint... but it was right there. I can handle this, as I walked up to the counter. "Dos numeros tres, por favor". "Oh, and dos limon" as I pointed to the the bottled lemonade in the cooler". Ha, pulled that one off pretty easy. Then the clerk rattled off something really fast in Spanish. Huh?? Cindy poked me and said "do you want to supersize this?" Oh, "no, mediano". OK, I got away with that one. Then the clerk again rattled off something else really fast. Huh?? Cindy chimed in... "for here"- and pointed at the tables. For a minute I thought she really might of understood what was being said. Nope, she just has more experience at BurgerKing than me. So with my bruised ego, we had lunch.

We were successful in catching the bus back. Just asked the bus driver: "marina??", he said "si", so we got on. Once again, I was proud that our skills were working so far. Crap. How do we let him know when we want off? The other folks just got off when others got on. I was thinking I could jump up and yell "alto, alto!!" (stop, stop), but with my luck, he'd jam on the brakes and we'd all go through the windshield. Cindy leaned forward and poked the guy and pointed to the sidewalk. Great..... I think she just propositioned him. But, he pulled over and let us off. Gracias.

We really enjoyed the other cruisers at the marina. John and Judy from Dreamcatcher were especially helpful- told us about the busses, showed us where to get drinking water, how to play Mexican Train, etc. We really enjoyed our time with them... it made it really hard to leave. We also enjoyed meeting with Joe, Maureen, Luke, and Brianna from SV Detour- who were headed off to the Marquesis. And Bob from Stray Dog, and...... What a great place to enter Mexico and get our feet wet.

Then off to head south. We departed in early afternoon, to time arrival at Bahia San Quintin in early morning (kind of a habit now). Our original intent was to spend a day at Isla San Martin, but the flies were the worst we've ever seen... so underway for a couple of hours to Bahia San Quintin. San Quintin was beautiful- the sun was out, the weather was perfect, and except for a few pangas that went past- we were by ourselves. For scenery, to the north were 4 inactive volcanoes, and to the west was a beach. The beach was over a mile long, white sand, and deserted. Just us. We had to anchor out quite a ways to avoid shoals and the surf as the surge traveled over the sandbars. Quite scenic. We were treated to view a whale in the bay. One afternoon while traveling ashore, Cindy yelled "rock!" as she saw a shadow under us. I cut the engine and swerved the dinghy. Nope, no rock. Dolphins!! All around us. They came right up alongside the dinghy. Cindy was getting scared and Buddy was going nuts. Never experienced anything like this before. The next morning while taking Buddy ashore, I had to keep my eye on surf- so we kind of traveled a bit out of our way. Then the whale decided to surface in front of us. Crap. Do we take our chances with the whale or with the surf. Hmmmm.... let's avoid the whale and deal with the surf. When it comes to commuting hazards, this was much nicer that dealing with traffic on a freeway.