Guide To Ensenada

ENSENADA , just ninety minutes on from Tijuana by the toll road and sitting on Bahia de Todos Santos, is favoured by Californians "in the know", and at weekends it's packed with partying groups of southern Californians. Yet it remains far calmer, cheaper and smaller than Tijuana - though still with a pretty clear idea of the value of the US dollar - and has a growing reputation as an ecotourism spot. With some life and culture of its own as a major port and fish-processing centre, it's also home to one of the nations largest wineries, although the distinctly average quality of the stuff produced here makes this a somewhat dubious badge of distinction.

Today home to nearly 200,000 people, when the first explorers sailed into Ensenada's waters almost 400 years ago, the lack of fresh water made permanent settlement difficult, but over the next two hundred years Bahia de Todos Santos became a popular port-of-call for whaling ships, fur traders, Spanish treasure fleets and the pirate ships who sought them, and by around 1870 it had developed into a supply point for missionaries working along the northern Mexican frontier. When gold reserves were discovered that year nearby in Real de Castillo, miners rushed in but at the beginning of the twentieth century the mines closed and the population dwindled, leaving Ensenada to revert to little more than a small fishing village. Salvation came in the late 1930s with the rise of agriculture in the Mexicali Valle, and the port became a point of export for the produce, and when the paved highway from Tijuana was opened some forty years later and American tourist dollars began to pour in. Today it is a popular stop for cruise ships.

Almost all the action is squeezed into a few streets around the harbour : seafront Boulevard Costero (aka Lázaro Cárdenas), Avenida Mateos (or C 1), which runs parallel to and as far inland as Avenida Juárez (C 5). Here you'll find scores of souvenir shops and outfits offering sport-fishing trips, as well as the bulk of the bars, hotels and restaurants - most visitors come here to eat, drink, shop and little else. If you do want to explore further, you could check out the view from the Chapultepec Hills, overlooking town from the west, or visit the Bodegas de Santo Tomás winery , one of Baja's largest, which offers tours and regular tastings at Miramar 666. From December through to March, the California grey whale migration from the Arctic to the Baja's Pacific coast can be seen on daily whale-watching tours from Ensenada, which go to Todos Santos Bay