One-Day Cruising: San Diego to Baja and Back

It was early morning on a balmy midweek day aboard the glistening, white-red-and-blue-trimmed, 478-foot, seven-deck, Bahamas-flagged Pacific Star--the West Coast’s only one-day cruise ship.

Promptly at 9 a.m., with the blast of the ship’s horn, we were underway from San Diego’s Cruise Ship Terminal on a 13-hour cruise that would take us to Ensenada for 2 1/2 hours of touring and shopping, then back to San Diego at 10:30 that night. Newspaper ads for the “one day, fun day cruise,” offered weekdays and weekends by San Diego-based Starlite Cruises, promised “three fabulous buffet meals,” full casino action, sun deck, hot tubs, sports bar, Vegas-style shows, live music and duty-free shopping on board.

As the ship glided through the clear morning air, passengers waved to sailors standing on the conning tower of a submarine moving along the water surface just off the starboard side. As the sailors waved back, two Navy S-3A Viking jets from the nearby North Island Naval Air Station thundered low overhead, wingtip-to-wingtip.

Leaving the harbor, the Pacific Star sailed by Cabrillo National Monument and the Point Loma Lighthouse out into the calm waters of the Pacific, heading south for Ensenada and Old Mexico.

Boarding of the multi-aged crowd--ranging from families with small children to retirees--had begun at 7 a.m., about the same time a scrumptious buffet breakfast commenced in the ship’s Rainbow Grille. All meals were served buffet-style and this one, which included a fruit table, pastries and various configurations of eggs, bacon, sausage and ham, was served until 9:30. Some of the 398 passengers aboard on this Tuesday had settled into comfortable deck chairs in the sun long before the ship got underway.

Others waited for the moment when the Pacific Star’s Diamond Lil’s Casino opened its doors, to make a beeline for the 150 slot machines, the video poker machines, craps table, roulette wheel, six blackjack tables and two Caribbean-style stud poker tables. Table bets ranged from $3 minimum to $500 maximum, and Starlite Cruises sales manager Kevin Wisner acknowledges that there are those who go on the cruise for the gambling. We noticed that the casino was pretty much full from the time it opened in international waters--about 45 minutes after leaving San Diego--to about 45 minutes before docking that evening, but all in all it seemed to be more an in-and-out atmosphere than a place where high rollers parked.

After breakfast, we toured the ship stem to stern, deck to deck, popping into the duty-free shop, checking out the lounges and eyeballing the lineup of photos taken by ship’s photographers under the “Welcome Aboard” sign at the gangplank. (The photos, large color prints, were selling for $5 each.) Photographers were almost everywhere during the voyage--with new photographs constantly being printed and posted in the Photo Shop.

The ship’s main lounge, the Speakeasy, has a Las Vegas-style review and bingo during the day; stand-up comedians perform in Gatsby’s nightclub; there’s a sports bar with both sit-down and stand-up areas, and another sit-down, stand-up area called Bonnie and Clyde’s. Strolling mariachis serenaded passengers here and there. The ship’s movie theater was showing “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken,” but only while the ship was docked in Ensenada, for those who didn’t want to go ashore.

There was no spa, lap track, pool or other exercise facilities, but two generous-sized hot tubs bubbled on top deck, and there was an infirmary staffed with a doctor and nurse. A children’s playroom was staffed during the summer, but we were told that it would soon be disbanded until next summer.

As we walked by the Speakeasy, a ship’s hostess was making an enthusiastic presentation on the two tours being offered during our time ashore that afternoon in Ensenada, from 2:30 to 5 p.m. She explained that one tour would wind by bus through downtown Ensenada; visit the elegant Riviera del Pacifico, the famous resort and casino frequented by the Hollywood crowd during the ‘20s and ‘30s, and now the city’s cultural and convention center; stop at the Plaza Civica with its 12-foot-high busts of Mexican heroes Juarez, Carranza and Hidalgo, and tour the Chapultepec Hills residential area just above town.

The other tour was scheduled to go through the city and then visit Baja California’s oldest winery, picturesque Bodegas de Santo Tomas, with its enormous wooden casks stacked in aging rooms. Both tours would wind up back downtown, providing ample time to shop for leather goods, ceramics, pottery, baskets and other wares.

There was only time to take one of the tours, which were being offered through a local tour operator for $13.50 each. (If you deducted the $3 all passengers were required to pay for the shuttle bus into town and back, the cost was more like $10.50.)

For the moment, though, many passengers were simply standing at the bow and fantail rails, allowing themselves to be buffeted by a pleasant breeze. Others relaxed in deck-side chairs or inside, in front of floor-to-ceiling lounge windows, watching the scenery as the ship skirted the Baja coast.

On the voyage south, lunch is served from noon to 1:30 in the huge dining room--big rounds of ham and roast beef carved off the bone; cold cuts, thin-sliced cheese, mustards and breads for sandwich-making; chili, ravioli; a salad area, and a table full of desserts. We sailed by Tijuana, Mexico’s fourth-largest city at 1.2 million; by the Coronado Islands--Norte, De Medeo, Sur--lying off of Rosarito Beach; the towering Sierra de Juarez Mountains, by La Mision, Bajamar, Cape Salsipuedes (which means “get out if you can” ) and finally into Ensenada’s Bahia de Todos Santos, named after “all of the saints” by the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino in 1602.

We’d been 70 miles and 5 1/2 hours at sea before docking in Ensenada, population 260,000, with its bay filled with commercial and sportfishing boats and freighters being loaded with crops from the Mexicali Valley for shipment to Mexico’s mainland and the Orient.

It was our friend Millie Malmin who spotted the newspaper ad about the Pacific Star’s seven-day-a-week, one-day cruises to Ensenada. Millie and John called another couple, our friends Frank and Gethine Brown who live in La Jolla, and my wife Arliene and me, to see if we would join them.

Cost per person of the one-day cruise, as advertised, is $89 Sunday through Friday and $99 on Saturdays, plus a $15 port charge per person. Seniors 62 and older get a $10 break off the per-person price, and package deals are available with hotels in both Ensenada and San Diego. For example, one could sail to Ensenada and instead of coming home with the ship that day, stay overnight at the San Nicolas Hotel, returning with the next day’s shipload of passengers. Current price for the cruise and one-night stay at the San Nicolas, booked through Starlite, is $139 per person. (Regular room rates at the San Nicolas are $70 to $90 per double-occupancy room.)

For Los Angeles residents who would like a hotel room in San Diego before and/or after their cruise, package deals are available through a number of San Diego hotels, including the Regency Plaza, Holiday Inn Harbor View, the Bay Club Hotel and Marina, Ramada Hotel Bay View, Holiday Inn on the Bay, Radisson Hotel San Diego and Grosvenor Inn. At this writing, several of these establishments were offering hotel-room and cruise-package deals that added very little to the cost of the cruise itself.

We--all six of us--stayed at the Browns’ house in La Jolla the nights before and after sailing. We had a great dinner Monday night at the Marriott La Jolla, where the food and ambience are tops and prices minimal--an unbelievable $31 for Arliene and me, including drinks. It cost us $16.50 for gas for the drive down from Los Angeles and back. Parking at the Cruise Ship Terminal in San Diego was $3.

All of us have been on many cruises over the years, to the Caribbean, Alaska, Mexico. Frank and Geth, Arliene and I shared our first cruise together in 1958, to and from Hawaii on the old Lurline and Matsonia. Cruising, you might say, is our cup of tea.

Passengers on our mini-cruise were a mix of young, middle-aged and older people. There were some honeymooners such as Marta Hill, 27, a first-grade teacher, and her husband Todd, 22, a farmer from Los Banos. The cruise was part of their five-day San Diego honeymoon. “My grandmother gave us the cruise as a wedding gift,” Marta said.

We ended up talking to the Rev. John Hoppe, 35, and his wife, Heidi, 32, who were taking the cruise to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. He’s pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Oceanside.

“Friends recommended this. We’re glad they did,” said Heidi. There seemed to be a lot of people aboard celebrating something. It was the first cruise for Shelly Coop, a keeper at the Los Angeles Zoo celebrating her 23rd birthday, and her friend, Nikki Stief, 23, a veterinary office technician from Long Beach.

The three couples in our group pitched in an extra $65 for the luxury of a deluxe stateroom with private bath and beds for resting in privacy. There were 150 staterooms available, priced at $45 or $65 over the cost of the cruise. We were glad we got one of them.

Dinner that night was more elaborate than lunch, with more hot entrees and a tempting assortment of cream puffs, pies and cakes made by on-board pastry chefs. Waiters hovered at every table to fetch condiments, water and coffee. For $20 more per passenger, one can have an assigned seat in a fancier dining room where guests order from the menu and are served. We stuck with the buffet arrangement and weren’t sorry.

There have been one-day cruises from Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale and Miami to Freeport in the Bahamas for several years. But this is a new experience for Californians, according to a Starlite spokesman. The Greek-owned Pacific Star began its one-day sailings out of San Diego to Ensenada Dec. 20 of last year. The most popular sailing day is Saturday, with as many as 1,100 aboard. For less-crowded decks, dining, dancing, entertainment and gaming rooms, consider booking for one of the other six days.

Prices in the ship’s duty-free store--which has the usual assortment of liquor, Gucci and Seiko watches, jewelry, perfume and expensive china and glassware--are an enticement. We paid $11 for a liter of Absolute Vodka and $21 for a liter of Cointreau, cheaper than in stores in Ensenada, and about half what they would cost here.

Shopping in Mexico was fun and inexpensive. We bought a half-dozen blue-white Tlaquepaque glasses, the slightly irregular handblown glasses made in that town near Guadalajara, for $3.50 each, and a gorgeous dress for our granddaughter Kristina that cost 99,500 pesos ($33). We remarked that mariachis greeting the ship in Ensenada would have added to the ambience. Maybe someone will pass that idea along. And many of the shopkeepers were on siesta while the ship was in port. We saw something we would like to have purchased in one window but the store was closed for siesta.

Built in 1967 and formerly the Crown Princess Victoria, the Pacific Star was completely refurbished last year by its new owners, the A. Lelakis group of companies based in Piraeus, Greece. The ship’s 230-member crew is a virtual United Nations, with nationals from 33 countries represented aboard. Greeks are the deck officers. The pastry chef is Swiss. The Red Dragon flag of Wales hangs in the purser’s office.

All passengers were required to be back on board at 5 p.m. unless they were staying overnight in Ensenada. At 5:30 the ship set sail. Passports are not needed for U.S. citizens entering and leaving Mexico via the Pacific Star. Non-U.S. citizens who take the cruise, however, are required to show proper documents to immigration and Customs officials on the ship en route back. The action-hungry had only to wait until 5:45 for casino opening, and it was a beautiful starlit night as we sailed home to a spectacular welcome of clanging bell buoys, and the lights of the Coronado Bridge and San Diego.

Two women standing on an open deck wearing light jackets against the cool night breeze summed up our sentiments:

First woman: “What a wonderful day!” Second woman: “But it went too fast!”