Beach Days in Ensenada

October 14, 2022

The beach in Ensenada is quite large.  It runs pretty well the entire width of the bay, and it runs uninterrupted for about 7km.  After 7km there is an estuary area before it continues again on the other side.  We explored all of the 7km on our side of the estuary, but we did not go to the other half of the beach. 

It was a 2.6km walk through the city for us to get from the marina to the beach, but it was worth it, as the beach was a beautiful place to walk, and the water was so warm. 

We often went to the beach for a long walk, and it was lovely to be able to walk barefoot in the water in shorts and t-shirt in October and not even get cold feet.  The first day that we walked the beach we walked the entire 7km length, and it turned into a 17km day.   

The tides are much smaller here than we are used to in BC, but there is still about a 6-foot tidal exchange on the large tides, and because the beach had such a shallow gradient, 6 feet made a big difference.  

When the tide was going out there were three different types of sandpiper-like birds that we had never seen before.  One was smaller, white and gray in colour, and it had a short, maybe 1.5” long beak.  The other two types were much larger birds, with longer legs and beaks. One of those was white and dusty gray, and with a beak that was about 4” long, while the largest of them all was golden coloured with speckles, which looked beautiful when the bird was in flight.  Some of these golden birds had beaks that were straight and others had curved beaks, and the beak seemed to be up to about 5” long.  None of the birds were very afraid of us, as long as we maintained our course and speed.  If we stopped to watch them, however, they would fly away.   

On the first day that we walked to the beach, we were walking along and noticed that as the tide was going out there were small gravelly patches. This seemed a bit odd since everything else around, including the large dunes up from the beach, was sand. 

Upon closer inspection we discovered that the "gravel" patches were actually patches of tiny shells.  Each shell had a different colour pattern and was ever so small, maybe a quarter of an inch; none of them were large.  They were all on the surface of the sand and we thought that they were just be broken shells, but when we picked one of the pretty shells up we found that it was alive; all of them were alive. 

They were on the surface of the sand, but also sticking into it just a bit, and there were large patches of them.  Very interesting.  

Apart from our walks along the beach, we also spent two wonderful days just lounging and playing at the beach.  Packing water, a picnic lunch, our beach blanket, and toys, we headed to the beach in the morning and picked our spot for the day. 

Although we played a lot of Frisbee, we also spent the majority of our time taking turns going out and playing in the waves. 

It was amazing how warm the water was, and of course it helped that we were used to the cold waters of BC, so to us it felt very warm. 

We were able to go out and play and play and not even get a chill, which was a real treat. 

If there is one thing that makes me feel like a kid again, it is playing at the beach, hot sand under my feet, and frolicking in the waves; there is nothing quite like it!  

One thing that was very novel for us at the beach in Ensenada was the amount of sea life that there was right along the shoreline.  When we were out playing in the waves, every time that a wave began to build and crest we could look inside the wave and see schools of fish, sometimes just little ones, but other times bigger ones, about 8-10 inches long.  And, just out from the cresting waves it was not uncommon to see dolphins swimming by or feeding, and regularly pelicans would dive for a mouthful of fish.  It was a beautiful environment to be in.   

Although the beach was never very busy, because of it being winter, there were still venders that would come by trying to sell us something.  Some venders tried to sell us handmaid bracelets, others had different kinds of jewellery, and even hammocks and slingshots, and some sold snacks. 

The people selling snacks had quite the setup with a wheelbarrow as their stand.  On top of the wheelbarrow they had a full tabletop loaded up with mangos, sweet candies, bags of different types of snacks, and sauces.  On one of our beach days we decided to try something from one of the carts that was clearly mainly targeting the locals.  When we asked the guy what he was selling he of course rambled off a whole list of items that we had no idea what they were. So, we picked one, and got a surprise.  What we ended up getting was a very odd concoction of things with a sauce on top, which we had seen people eating on the beach before.  The base was a bag of pork rinds, and on top of that the guy put some prunes and three other things that we don’t know what they were.  On top of all of that he squirted a bright red sauce and then handed it to us with a fork and napkins. 

It was very very interesting.  At first the flavour was so curiously odd to me that I didn’t really care for it, but I tried a few more of the various items, and the flavour definitely grew on me.  The sauce had a spicy, tangy taste and it turned out to actually be quite good.  It was amazing how different that beach snack was from anything that I had ever seen at a beach in Canada.