ginger50

I thought I would post a trip report since I rarely find information about these two spots just south of the California border. My husband and I stayed for two nights in an Airbnb in Rosarito Beach, we were joined by friends the second night and then the three of us went to Valle de Guadalupe for wine tasting for two nights.

Day one:

We were staying with a relative in San Diego prior to this trip so we decided to take the San Diego trolley down to San Ysidro and walk across the border into Mexico. I have done this many times during the years I lived in California and have never been asked for my passport before this.

Since we travel to Canada a lot, my husband and I have Nexus cards. I did not realize they were only for use getting back into the US and that for entry into Mexico They only accept a Sentry card. We did not bring our passports with us so when we walked across the border, we were pulled into a room and my husband was fingerprinted. We were let into Mexico without passports but instructed to bring them the next time. From the border crossing our plan was to walk to the collectivo station to catch the one dollar colectivo to Rosarito, but due to construction we didn’t find it. We took a taxi instead, $15 from the California border to our Airbnb in Rosarito beach.

The Airbnb that we stayed at was located at La Paloma. We have stayed at these condos before and they are very nice. Water pressure and hot water can be a problem, but we expected this so no problem. Easy to walk anywhere, easy to catch transportation. Since we did not have a car until our friends arrive to the next day it was a convenient spot. We walked a short distance to the 7-Eleven and loaded up on water.

Our first stop is generally Tacos Yaqui, but they are closed on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so we had lunch at Tacos de Paisano. Very good tacos and burritos, not as good as Tacos Yaqui. We had a great time wandering around Rosarito Beach looking in the little shops. For dinner we took a six dollar taxi ride to Puerto Nuevo. This night we ate at Angels, this is my husband’s favorite for lobster. It was a very slow Tuesday night and Puerto Nuevo is a little seedy after dark. We walked up to the main road and took a 15 peso colectivo back to La Paloma.

ginger50

I notice in my first paragraph I said there were three of us. They were four.

Day two:

From what I am about to write, you may think that all we did on this trip was eat and drink. That is true. We got up early and took a long walk all around the area, followed by the best grilled $1 shrimp tacos ever at Baja Tacos Jr.

Our friends arrived about two in the afternoon and were hungry so we all walked down to Susanna’s for good wine for all and snacks for them. We then went silver shopping at our buddy Peter’s shop where we always buy beautiful jewelry at a very reasonable price.

We went back to Puerto Nuevo that night for lobster dinner and had what my friends and I consider a great meal at Puerto Nuevo II. We loved all of the food there and voted it our number one spot, DH still felt that Angels was better. I must agree that Angels does have the superior view.

ginger50

Day three:

We rise early and hike from one end of Rosarito Beach to the other. Our plan is to purchase fruit from the fruit cutters on the beach like we typically do, but they were not out yet at 8:30 AM. This was November 2, Día de los Muertos, so I suspect they were getting ready for a busy day later. We returned to La Paloma, got ready, packed up the car and stopped at Tacos Baja Jr. for grilled shrimp and fish taco breakfast.

Our trip to Valle de Guadalupe took about 1.5 hours by car. Back in August, we had made a reservation for two rooms at a very highly rated B and B by the name of Terre Del Valle. Their reservations are made through emailing them, and that is how you get the price, through email. We had several emails confirming our prices, one week before our reservation we received an email letting us know that it would be $50 more per room, that they had made a mistake when they quoted us the price. We very politely requested that they honor the price that they had quoted us in three different emails but they would not. It was an expensive place to begin with and we never would have stayed there had we known how much it was going to cost, but it this point our options were very limited.

In any event, it was a lovely place, the setting was great, the rooms were very pretty and comfortable, and the organic breakfast was quite delicious. We had a lot of fun hiking to a few wineries right from the B and B and enjoyed the company of the other guests.

We splurged on dinner at Deckmans. We all had mixed feelings about this. The location is absolutely stunning. They do all the cooking outside on giant grills, I think there is an indoor place to eat but we ate outdoors. It was a chilly night but they provided us with nice warm blankets. Our server was very friendly, the wine was very good and not outrageously priced, the menu was diverse and also not outrageously priced. My friends split two dishes and my husband and I ordered their specialty, the ribeye steak for two. Our friends dishes came after we had been there about 30 minutes. 45 minutes later our steak showed up, it was cooked the way we ordered it but it was cold. It was a big disappointment, because the meat was extremely flavorful but cold is not what you expect from a $70 steak. One would also expect of a restaurant of this caliber that they could get the food on the table together for a party of four. Our waiter wasn’t too pleased with this, and he did comp our second bottle of wine. All in all, I’m really glad we went since the reviews are so good and it truly was a fantastic place. The whole experience was kind of funny but we did enjoy ourselves.

baldone

Thanks ginger. We visited friends in Primo Tapia a couple years back and they took us through VdG. I could have easily spent more time there. Beautiful area. I had read up on Puerto Nuevo, but they insisted on Splash.

ginger50

Thanks. We always think about Splash, but end up at Puerto Nuevo. Hard to resist that grilled lobster