Known for naughtiness, this Mexican border town bares its historic side.

BY REED KARAIM

Historic postcard (Baja Life Online)

One day, an extraordinarily long time ago in my life, my brother and I drove from Los Angeles south to Tijuana and then 60 miles farther down the Baja Peninsula to the seaside town of Ensenada. In the course of a single night we narrowly avoided being mugged, tried to join a mariachi band, dodged a bar fight with overly exuberant U.S. Marines, ate a truly heroic number of street tacos and hot dogs, found ourselves visiting a parade of colorful establishments with the same Marines (who had mysteriously become our best friends), and ended up sleeping in our car on the beach.

Sometime around daybreak, I was awakened by a knock on the window.

“Hey, could you move the car back?”

“Wha— ?”

“Roll the car back just a little, man. So we can take the picture.”

I obliged and discovered that parked next to us was a car with stateside tags that, in the great spirit that built the United States into the nation it is today, had been completely covered in beer cans. Later that morning, I strolled past couples still asleep face down in the rocks while, somewhere in the distance, “Private Idaho” by the B-52s floated out over the pale beach and into the hazy, dreamlike blue of the Pacific at dawn.

 

Tijuana postcard (Baja Life Online)

It was, in short, a fairly typical border town visit, single-guys-in-their-20s category. Not all American tourists are quite such happy chuckleheads as my brother and I were 18 years ago. But gringo trips to Tijuana and Ensenada haven’t traditionally been what you would call exercises in sophisticated travel. History, culture, a search for the beautiful and profound have all customarily taken a back seat to cold beer and haggling over leather goods.

I am here to change all that for you. Older, wiser … well, definitely older, old enough that even the thought of sleeping in a car makes my back ache, I called my brother and said, “Hey, I’m going back down to Tijuana and Ensenada, just like we did that time back in the ’80s, only this time I’m going to look at old buildings and historic stuff. Wanna come along?”

“Sounds great,” Lee said. “Except maybe I’ll skip the old buildings.”

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