Ensenada is where most riders meet Baja for the first time properly, a port of nearly three hundred thousand people on the Bahía de Todos Santos, about an hour and a half south of the Tijuana border crossing. The bay got its name from the explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno, who sailed in early in the seventeenth century and named it for All Saints. Today the town is a working harbour first, with fish markets, shipyards and a busy cruise terminal, and a tourist town second, with a famous old cantina and plenty of seafood on the waterfront.
The road down from Tijuana is the toll road along the coast, a fast four-lane highway that goes past Rosarito and then hugs the cliffs above the Pacific, with pull-outs, cliff-top views and a lot of fog in the morning. The free road, Highway 1, parallels it inland, and from Ensenada southward the main highway continues over the hills to San Vicente and San Quintín. Take the toll road, since it is safer, and keep to daylight hours. The surface is generally good, though speed bumps appear at the village entrances and trucks are slow on the grades.
Food is the thing to do here. Ensenada has a good claim to being the origin of the Baja-style fish taco, battered and fried fish with cabbage and a squeeze of lime, and the stalls near the fish market sell it for little money. A short ride inland leads to the Valle de Guadalupe, the main wine region of Mexico, with olive groves, vineyards and some serious restaurants. Closer to town, La Bufadora is a blowhole on the rocky headland south of the city, where waves shoot spray high into the air.
Fuel is easy here, and so are hotels, and the town is a good place to buy supplies before the long empty miles of central Baja. The weather is mild all year, with cool mornings and a dry summer, and the best riding comes in autumn and spring.