Back to Baja, day 13

After having been crooned by Sinor Elvis at last night's dinner, we decided to become groupies and follow him to his gig at Bajamar, a community about 22 miles north of Ensenada. Miguel was performing at the Bajamar Ocean Front Golf Resort in the clubhouse main room!

Miguel's performance didn't start until 6:30, so that gave us all day to explore Ruta de Vino. The Guadalupe Valley is the area famous for Mexican wines, some quite renowned.

Before venturing off, we did a


little shopping, had a little breakfast and did a little shopping. In that order.




All packed and off we go. It was a pretty short cruise to the beginning of the valley. To visit any of the wineries requires you to leave the pavement and navigate dirt, gravel and/or sand roads and some almost paths. A little tough on bikes built for the highways but doable with care.

We attempted to visit quite a number of wineries and none were sampling the fruits of their efforts. After talking to other people on a similar mission, we learned that L.A. Cetto, at the far end of the valley, was open and sampling their wine. It was not all that far, so off we go!

The valley is dotted with hundreds of wineries ranging from big to micro sized. We have been told of places so small that they don't even yet have labels. Just a piece of tape hand written with the pertinent information. As success has met the first wineries in the valley, many newer establishments have sprouted up to chase that same success.




L.A. Cetto's wines were pretty
good and our server, Gilberto, made sure we sampled as many as possible, all while doing a nice job explaining the grapes and the process. Since we hadn't had lunch, we purchased a loaf of olive bread, a great queso (cheese) Gouda and a bottle of


wine to accompany it. We snacked on the patio before heading off.

While talking about other winery


possibilities over our snack, Hector and Bernard at the next table, overheard the conversation and offered us a wealth of knowledge about the area and the best wines to visit. ...Mañana.

The valley seems to have about as many olive trees as grape vines. We sampled some of those olives and the oil extracted from them, at the winery. Very nice. Top notch oil and olives.


We found Bajamar and cruised to the hotel. After checking in we headed toward the restaurant where we dined and were entertained by the velvet tones of Miguel (Elvis) Ray all evening. Boy was he surprised (and I think pleased) that we actually made the trip.

Bajamar is a huge community populated, at least mostly, by retired Americans.

We wined,dined and danced until closing, along with some very frendly locals. Nice times…


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