This morning we went out to breakfast as soon as we got up at another favorite restaurant of ours, El Rey del Sol, in downtown Ensenada. It is also just a few blocks from the marina, but in the opposite direction from Los Veleros. The marina is built next to a river, and we noticed a different kind of dredging machine in the river. Eric wants one.

We walked by the new construction near the marina and were kind of surprised to see that little is done beyond the frame. This project has been planned for several years now, and grading work had begun while we had Kosmos here. And, come to think of it, the sign was gone. There used to be a big sign saying a museum was going to be built here. We wonder if that means the museum project has been abandoned.

Along the rest of the walk, everything else looked much the same. Several buildings were occupied by different businesses than before, but the buildings still look the same. There are a lot of coffee houses now. Coffee houses must be the new rage.

The restaurant was every bit as good as we remembered it. Eric and Trevor had one of Eric’s favorites, which is a frittata served in a bowl and smothered in a tomato sauce with cactus, red bell pepper (capsicum), black olives, cilantro and green onions. The cactus pieces could easily be mistaken for green bell peppers, though they are more bitter.

Christi tried a new dish, eggs scrambled with shredded manta ray meat, peppers, tomato and onion. We’ve never eaten manta ray before and she thought she’d try something new. It was very fishy.

By the time we got back, the marina office had opened. We went to Kosmos to grab our check in paperwork. As we started down the dock, we saw Stephanie and Lance pulling away from the dock. We went running down the dock, calling out “hi and bye”. They replied that they were getting fuel and would be back soon.

We picked up the paperwork and Eric went to the office to check in. The dock master is gone, but has been replaced with someone who is totally sweet. She went through our paperwork and made sure everything was in order. Then she got a package ready for us to take to the Port Captain’s office.

While Eric was in the office, Trevor packed his bags. He is going to take a bus to the border. His car is parked in San Diego, so from the border he’ll take public transit to where his car is parked. Trevor is really excited to be going home so much earlier than anticipated, both because he misses his girlfriend and because he has a lot of work to do that has been piling up while he has been gone.

The three of us all walked out of the marina together. On the street, Trevor hailed a cab to take him to the bus station and we all said our goodbyes. Eric and Christi strolled down the main drag to the other end of downtown, where the Port Captain’s office is located. We know we keep harping on this, but it felt so good to know exactly where we were going, so good to be somewhere familiar.

As we walked, we laughed about the first time we came to Ensenada with Kosmos. Eric had driven the boat down from Dana Point with a couple crew, Tom and Jeff. The path of least resistance to getting Tom and Jeff back to Dana Point was for Christi to drive to Ensenada in her car, pick them up, and then deliver the crew back to Dana Point.

Christi had never driven in Mexico before. She was terrified about driving down after all the bad stories we have heard about reckless drivers and crooked cops that stop tourists to demand bribes. She carefully followed the speed limit and obeyed every traffic sign, even though it infuriated the other drivers around her. She was driving incredibly defensively and considered the other drivers “scary” since they didn’t drive as politely as US drivers tend to. Somehow, she took a wrong turn and wound up on the free road south instead of the toll road south. Supposedly, the free road was laden with banditos that would rob cars stopped at red lights. She was in something of a panic every time she hit a light. Eventually, she saw an entrance to the toll road and was relieved until she saw that the toll booths had several few armed soldiers around them. The soldiers terrified her and she expected to be shaken down for money above and beyond the toll booth fees by them. She was a wreck the whole drive down and pretty much everything seemed to frighten her. But she made it to Ensenada with absolutely no problems and realized that driving in Mexico isn’t nearly as bad as all the hype makes it out to be.

She was waiting at the marina when Kosmos pulled in. The four of us drove to the officials together, which are conveniently housed in one building. We went round and round and round trying to find the office. Had we walked, we would have found it with no problems, but we had chosen not to walk because somehow we felt incredibly vulnerable being out on the street with our precious boat documentation in hand.

When we did finally find it, we were nervous wrecks. We were both absolutely terrified of checking in. What if they asked for bribes? Could they deny us entry and make us go back to the States if we didn’t pay the bribes? What if there was something wrong with the paperwork? Would they arrest us and permanently confiscate our boat? After all, this is a foreign country where the crooked officials can do anything they wanted, right?

We almost passed out when it turned out there was indeed a SNAFU with our paperwork. Since our boat was brand new, we hadn’t gotten the original hard copy of the coast guard certification in the mail yet. We were trying to check in using a fax copy f the certification, which the Mexican officials wouldn’t accept. Oh, Lord, here comes the request for the bribe in order to take a fax copy. Our worst fears had come true! The boat was going to be confiscated!

But no one had asked for a bribe and they never alluded to confiscation. They simply wanted to verify that the boat wasn’t stolen and is legally flagged. We were so on edge over our irrational fears that we were about ready to have a heart attack over the “horrible ordeal”. But, with a few phone calls to the right people, the issue was all cleared up in a couple of hours. The officials were pleasant and didn’t seem at all like they were “out to get us”. They were simply trying to do their job. We were the ones who made the situation stressful by overreacting to something that was truly no big deal. In retrospect, we should have been thanking them for their diligence, not freaking out about it.

In so many ways we are different people now. The Christi and Eric of today wouldn’t have stressed at all about the SNAFU. We would have calmly made the phone calls and patiently waited for the clearance to take place. We can’t believe how much we feared “foreign” and “different” only 3 years ago. Now we embrace both. And we think we were silly to ever be afraid of those things. It is funny how illogical the fear emotion is. Humans on the whole generally don’t fear things that are truly dangerous but familiar, like rush hour traffic. But humans tend to fear the unfamiliar, even if it is perfectly safe. Humans tend to let the smallest and most obscure negative stories about the unfamiliar to become bigger deals in our minds than they are in reality, which increases the clouds in our already clouded vision as to what is safe and unsafe.

Anyway, back to our day. The Port Captain took less than 5 minutes, and we enjoyed our leisurely stroll back. We got back from the port captain’s office about the same time Stephanie and Lance got back from fueling up. Because the blog is so far behind real time, they thought we were in the Caribbean right now, so they were absolutely shocked when they had seen our boat next to them this morning. Here our the two Nordies, side by side

We visited with them some, then they offered to take us out to lunch to celebrate our accomplishment, which was very nice of them. Interestingly, they picked a seafood restaurant we have eaten at only once before, with Richard and another couple that own a Nordhavn 40. The only two times we have been to this place were both with Nordhavn owners. What a small world.

While we were out, we noticed that the town seems to be dead. There aren’t many tourists around at all. The cruise ship is in, but it seems like not very many people are getting off the cruise ship to walk around town. Stephanie and Lance told us that the combination of Americans having less money for vacations, the drug wars, the tomatoes with salmonella, and the kidnapping stories have had a devastating impact on the tourist industry in Ensenada. We had forgotten about the salmonella outbreak last year. Tomatoes infected with salmonella have been a big problem in the US for the last 10+ years, with most of the contaminated food coming from Virginia. Did people stop going to Virginia? No. But last year’s contamination was traced back to Mexico and now people are afraid to come here. How sad. Ensenada is such a great place. What we think is even more sad is that the people on the cruise ship are already here, but are so encompassed by fear that they are missing out on a neat cultural opportunity. As Eric said “You can’t run from the lows in life without also running from the highs, too”.

The afternoon and evening were low key. Eric rinsed the boat. Christi tidied some inside. We played on the internet and watched a movie. BTW, the internet here is really good and pretty cheap.

We are still reveling in our achievement and keep referring to each other as “circumnavigator”.