Just a quick note to wish visitors and readers of this blog a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year!

I am leaving Christmas Day on a nine-day road trip south of the border to to explore some new places and revisit a few favorites (picture above is from previous trip along the Baja peninsula). The plan is to drive south along the Sonora coast, take the ferry across the Gulf of California to the Baja peninsula – and make our way back north to Tijuana. I will be traveling with my partner in crime, two kids – and quite possibly a sock puppet.

It should be fun, and I plan on documenting it with my video camera and come back with some travel entries for this blog, which will resume publishing in January. Until then…cheers!

p.s. If you are feeling inspired to hit the road in Baja, you can check out the travelogue I put together from my 2006-2007 Baja trip.

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is the author a memorable poem about an artichoke, in which the vegetable is infused with military meaning but eventually emasculated by a shopper called Maria.

If I were a poet, I would probably write an ode of my own to the pitaya – the fruit of a cactus plant that is also known by the name “dragonfruit.” I first learned about the pitaya when I lived in Nicaragua in 1996. It was a scary-looking fruit on the outside with a spiny armor. But once you got past that tough exterior, the insides were dripping with a sweet magenta pulp that was loaded with tiny black seeds. Nicaraguans typically made the pitaya into a fruit juice, but sometimes slices of it ended up on salads and other food items.

Apparently there are a range of pitayas that grow around the Southern hemisphere, including Mexico, and this site reports that there are “several” that are from Nicaragua. Some other varieties have a white flesh and yellow exterior. It can also also be found in Vietnam and Malaysia.

I got to thinking about the pitaya recently because in one of my graduate classes we are looking at the company that produces POM Wonderful pomegranate juice. POM has funded a lot of research into the health benefits of the pomegranate and I would love to see the same thing happen with the pitaya  (this study seems to suggest that the pitaya also has high antioxidant potential). Like the pitaya, I found Nicaragua to be a country with a rough, complicated exterior. Once you got past that, though, the country – and the pitaya –  was full of surprises and wonders, which made it well worth the challenge.

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Rosarito Beach  held a sand sculpture contest this weekend, and the builders were still busy at work by the time I got there around 2:30 p.m. that Sunday. Shortly afterwards, the mayor of Rosarito Beach, Hugo Tores, inspected the 30+ entries as journalists chased after him with their cameras. The winning entry for the Baja Sand contest was an octopus. Second place went to a version of the Titanic and third place went to a design with an eco-friendly message created by employees of the Baja California water agency. Here are a few of the other entries:

A face with a mohawk hair cut…

A snowman made of sand…

An Aztec pyramid…

The twice-a-year Rosarito-Ensenada bike ride – celebrating its 30th year –  takes place this Saturday,Sept. 26.  About 5,000 riders are expected to participate in the event, according to a press release from Rosarito Beach’s communications office:

Participants can register online for $45 through www.BetterSignUp.com, or they can register on the day of the event for $50 at the Rosarito Beach Hotel. More information is available at www.RosaritoEnsenada.com as well as www.rosarito.org

If you are more in the mood to loll around than to flex your calves, another option in Rosarito Beach this weekend is a sand castle contest on Sunday, Sept. 27, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in front of the Rosarito Beach Hotel. 

According to Rosarito Beach’s communications office, registration and further information is available at info@rosarito.org, rosaritotur@baja.gob.mx or by calling 661-612-0200 or 661-612-0396 in Mexico or 619-730-1871 in the United States.

Video of Rosarito-Ensenada bike ride posted by BajaGeoff on YouTube.

One of the more popular entries on this blog has been about a certain U.S. policy that requires U.S. travelers returning from border towns like Tijuana to show a designated travel document, which in most cases means a passport, at the land ports of entry.

 It used to be  that many cross-border travelers could just flash a driver’s license, but potential terrorists and other border security concerns seem to have put an end to that – or maybe not.

The U.S. government started the policy this year. However, the reality and the rules don’t seem to be matching up. I have yet to hear from a  reader who has been prevented from re-entering the country for not having their passport. Here are a few recent postings  - in case you didn’t see them in the comments section – from readers who shared their own experiences of travelling sans passports. 

Hey Anna,
well i just got back from my vacation to San Filipe and had a blast. Check this out, all the stress and worry over not having a passport, for nothing. they let me right back over no questions asked. so i stopped at a jack in the box and ask two border patrol agents whats up with all of this… you know what they told me? they said that they cannot and will not deny any U.S. citizen entry back into the states. they said its in the constitution. they said “if you just have an I.D., you will just go to secondary and be questioned.” thats it!, they said that the passport is preffered but not “REQUIRED” its a bunch of media B.S. even they said it got alot of money moving for people were so scared to not have a passport. bottom line your a real citizen your aloud back home.
thanks,
Tony

And here’s another note from a frequent border-crosser called “Chris.”:

I cross 2 -4 times a week at the san ysidro crossing with nothing but my DL and birth certificate.

If your a US citizen you have nothing to worry about its a new rule not a codified law.. The consititution forbids keeping a citizen from returning. Yes got sent to secondary once but that was within the 1st week of the new policy.

Furthermore its a dumb rule it will not stop terrorists or border jumpers.

I personally use a special travel card called the SENTRI, so I’m not affected by all this, and I’m not advocating pushing your luck with the U.S. government, but it does raise an interesting question as to how feasible this policy really is. 

To read more reader comments go here: http://acrosstheborder.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/answer-to-question-about-passport-requirements-at-the-border/

I finally made it out to this Korean restaurant in Tijuana after hearing good things about the food from two people I know. For my first meal here, I ordered a tasty “hemul enchilado,” a spicy seafood and rice dish (see below) accompanied with a bowl of soup.

Kimchi Mix is owned by a Korean family, and they weren’t exactly chatty but they did tell me that there are about “four or five” other Korean restaurants in Tijuana and that half of Kimchi Mix’s clientele is Mexican and half is Korean. I don’t think they get a lot of tourists, in part because of its location in the eastern part of the city.

While trying to learn more about the Korean community and kimchi in Tijuana, I came across a paper by two Mexico researchers about Korean investment in Mexico. Korean companies are among other Asian industries that have opened up manufacturing factories along the Mexican border. But the Korean tie to Mexico goes further back than that, according to a Los Angeles Times article about Korean Mexicans who arrived in the southern part of the country in the early 1900s.

Kimchi Mix has been around for about three years, and I had actually seen the restaurant from afar but wrongly assumed it a Japanese restaurant (quite a few of those here). It wasn’t until a local told me that there was a Korean restaurant near the Carl’s Junior across from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, did I realize what  I had been missing. Interestingly, Kimchi Mix’s menus don’t include Korean tacos- at least not yet –  in contrast to what has become quite a Korean taco craze in Los Angeles and beyond. 

If you go: Kimchi Mix is open Monday through Friday, from noon to 9 p.m. and on Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m and meals are roughly $5-$7. It’s located in the Otay Universidad section of Tijuana, at the intersection of Calzado Tecnologico and Las Lomas, across the street from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California’s most western edge – near the Carl’s Junior restaurant. Go here for a Google map reference.

Do you know that Rosarito Beach’s Mayor Hugo Torres (right) surfs? I once saw a picture of the septuagenarian in a local Mexican newspaper, looking fit and ready to hit the waves with his surfboard.

Torres may not be competing in this weekend’s Rosarito Beach Pro-Am surf contest (Aug.22-23), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him there promoting the sport and the city’s attributes. To learn more about the event, here are excerpts from a Rosarito Beach press release that came to me via e-mail:

Screenshot of Rosarito Beach mayor Hugo Torres from Rosarito Beach city government page.

This past weekend I joined a group of food bloggers, writers and chefs from Los Angeles in what turned out to be a non-stop eating and drinking tour of Tijuana and Ensenada that was organized by cross-border food blogger Bill Esparza and other Tijuana associations (full credit in message from Kenn below).

Funded mostly by Tijuana tourism folks, my stomach had never experienced anything like this: Morsels of ostrich meat wrapped in organic green stuff at La Villa del Valle Bed & Breakfast in the Guadalupe Valley; Spicy baby octopus at Tijuana’s high-end Villa Saverios restaurant; and sea urchins served on tostadas with a zippy peanut sauce at an Ensenada taco stand called La Guerrerense. 

While I had already been to most of the Tijuana places on the itinerary – La Querencia, La Diferencia, Villa Saverios, L’Apricot, Cien An~os, Lorca, Tacos Los Salceados and Cheripan – I wasn’t familiar with all their offerings. A Saturday morning breakfast stop at the Barbacoa de la Ermita Tijuana, which is run out of a family home, was a surprising treat.

The Ensenada portion of the trip introduced me to the wide range of seafood offerings beyond the traditional fish taco. And Saverios chef/owner Javier Plascencia  - who I once interviewed for a story about Tijuana restaurants expanding north of the border – joined us in the wine country of Guadalupe Valley to cook us a picnic of swordfish and beef cheek tacos accompanied by unique sauces.

Ostensibly, the tour was to introduce these L.A.-based food experts to the wide variety of food options just south of the border, but it also was about relationship building and creating word-of-mouth buzz about the region’s more positive offerings. Several of the Los Angeles chefs expressed interest in participating in cross-border culinary reunions that Plascencia said he is involved in organizing.

Watching the food bloggers and freelancers snap photos of their food and scribble notes, I couldn’t help but feel a little envious of them. In my previous work as a reporter in Tijuana, I got to know the city’s darker side intimately, equating certain places and street corners with horrible crimes committed by the region’s drug groups. It’s a parallel universe, but one that is typically separate from the lives of ordinary tourists – and it certainly hasn’t stopped me from visiting the region regularly. Intently focused on the food, the visitors from L.A. couldn’t have cared less about such details.

And after a while, as my stomach became full with even more tasty morsels of foods, I started to understand why.

(Chef Javier Plascencia, who has a number of restaurants in Tijuana and Chula Vista, serves up some special tacos during a picnic outside a winery in the Guadalupe Valley).

Here are several posts from the 20+ food bloggers and writers who went on the trip:

Javier Cabral writes about his Baja experience  at teenageglutster.blogspot.com

Patty Berlin elaborates at eatingla.blogspot.com

Matt Kang provides his perspectives at his  blog, Mattatouille, www.mattatouille.com

Organizer Bill Esparza recaps the event at his blog, Street Gourmet LA @ streetgourmetla.blogspot.com

***I will post additional perspectives of the trip in future blog entries***

Credit goes to the Tijuana Convention & Visitors Bureau for compiling this trio of things to do in Tijuana this weekend of July 17 (Friday) through July 19 (Sunday). I was aware of the beer festival and the Opera festival – but not of the Annual Exxxpo Erotica. Here are snippets from the press release:

Tijuana’s 6th Annual Street Opera Festival takes place on Saturday with performances by 150 artists, singers, actors, dancers and musicians. This free street fair attracts thousands of people each year from Baja California and California. The Festival starts at 12 noon on Saturday, July 18, lasting until midnight, and is located along Calle Quinta (5th Street) and Aquiles Serdan streets in Colonia Libertad (just a few blocks east of the Pueblo Amigo Shopping Mall, south of the San Ysidro Border Crossing). Learn and hear more about Tijuana’s opera scene through this documentary produced by Stories de la Frontera:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JOiQwWHva8

 5th Annual International Craft Beer Festival – Check out more than 70 types of beer from 15 breweries in Mexico and around the world. Participating breweries include San Diego’s own Stone Brewing Company, Port Brewing Company, Tsingtao, Paulaner, Bear Republic, Carlsberg, Baja Brewing Company, and Cerveceria Tijuana (Tijuana’s own, award-winning micro-brewery). This three-day event (lasting Friday July 17 through Sunday, July 19) will be held at the Tijuana Caliente Casino and Race Track. Live rock, music and local singers – and local food. 

The Festival hours are Friday from 7:00pm to 1:00am, Saturday from 12:00pm to 12:00am (noon to midnight), and Sunday from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. Tickets are $5 ($60 pesos) per person, and include a threesome of your choice of beers. For more information: http://www.tjbeerfest.com/

Tijuana’s 2 Annual Exxxpo Erotica showcases adult entertainment, sexy fashion shows, educational workshops, sdance performances (for him and her), and a spicy collection of lingerie from the largest adult stores in Northwest Mexico. Held just a 10 minute drive from the 

border at Mezzanine Events Hall (near the intersection of the Via Rapida and Blvd. Insurgentes) – or a quick taxi ride from the Craft Beer Festival. Cost for adults 18 and over is $170 pesos (approximately US$13) at the door, with show hours from noon to midnight each day.  Event lasts Friday through Sunday. If you are old enough, go here: http://exxxpoerotica.com/Exxxpoerotica_17,18_y_19_de_Julio_del_2009.html