Weekend Escape: Baja California : Kayaking 101 : If you’ve got to start somewhere, make it an Estero Beach estuary, with Ensenada nearby

We dreamed of kayak expeditions: of floating on the turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez, of keeping whales company off the San Juan Islands, of exploring the fiords of southeast Alaska. Then it occurred to us that, maybe, we ought to first take some lessons in kayaking. That’s why we were here, huddled behind sand dunes out of the wind, eating our lunches and listening to the stories of our veteran instructor.

For two months Ed Gillet had paddled his kayak on a solo trip from Monterey to Hawaii. He’d spent a year on the coast of Chile, traveling up rivers to visit villages. He’d made countless trips to Baja, including a journey from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. There was no getting around it: We envied him.

What was a job for Gillet was a weekend lark for the three of us--Gary Piepenbrink (an attorney), Tom Wilson (a Pacific Bell executive), and myself (a university professor). By 3 p.m. Friday, we were out of our business suits and headed south. A few hours later, we were in Puerto Nuevo with lobster dinners and beers in front of us. It was a sunlit afternoon, and the world of work seemed far behind. Still, there was an air of discontent.

As we talked, the three of us realized we had subscriptions to many of the same magazines--Outside, Bicycling, Men’s Journal, and publications about hiking and boating. We were a “target audience:” middle-age, middle-income males who work 60-hour weeks and dream full-time about adventure travel. So, over beers, we tried to imagine solutions, ways of combining our weekend enthusiasms with income-producing endeavors--say, creating an adventure travel business and living a life like (say) Ed Gillet’s. Call it kayak envy.

Following advice Gillet had given us when we registered the month before (“If I had the time, that’s what I’d do”), we checked into the Estero Beach Hotel the night before the kayak class and made plans to party in Ensenada, about 15 minutes away. I was surprised by the hotel. I had dim memories of visiting the place about 10 years before, when it had struck me as ordinary. But now it looked like the kind of well-groomed resort one might encounter on Mexico’s mainland coast. Situated in a huge development of resort homes, the hotel occupies an expanse of beach, with sidewalks along the seawall, a fine restaurant, manicured lawns.

And it was a bargain. For $79 a night the three of us stayed in a double room that seemed a close cousin to a Holiday Inn, with a small patio adjoining a grassy common area at the end of which lay the Pacific. Moreover, an event occurred there that was unprecedented in my years of staying in hotels in the United States and Mexico: It took only one phone call to the front desk to get a roll-away bed, and it was brought in 20 minutes! By the end of our weekend, Tom and I observed that this was a place to which we would like to return with our wives. Gary, a bachelor, observed he’d have to acquire a wife first.

A short time later, Gary collapsed on the rollaway (after a grueling day in an L.A. courtroom). Undeterred, Tom and I headed off to reacquaint ourselves with Ensenada’s night life. Hussong’s (which used to be a gringo haunt) now seemed packed with Mexican nationals. Papas and Beer, across the street, had apparently become the favorite place for underage drinkers from the States. But we did discover a new place half a block north and half a block east: La Caban~ita, a funky cantina where a plucky tourist can go to hear authentic ranchera music. In the wee hours, we adjourned to Cafe Cafe on Calle Primera, an unusual phenomenon in Ensenada’s downtown bar scene--a tony coffee bar populated by Latin Uma Thurman look-alikes. Saturday morning, Gary, Tom and I had a tropical breakfast (coffee, toast, fresh pineapple and cantaloupe) on the hotel’s veranda, then joined our fellow students at the hotel’s boat launching area. Gillet’s firm, Southwest Kayaks in San Diego, offers beginner lessons about once a month at Estero Beach, limiting the classes to 12 participants. Ours was composed mostly of people in their 30s and 40s--three couples and six guys from San Diego, Fresno, Montreal, Chicago and Los Angeles. Moreover, as regular readers of adventure magazines, we knew Southwest Kayak’s prices were somewhat below what’s customary: two-day classes are $125 ($100 if you bring your own kayak), three-day classes $175 ($150 with kayak). Meals and lodging are not included and you need to bring sack lunches for the noon breaks. Those who really want to shave costs can forgo a hotel room and stay in the adjoining campground for about $10 a night.

Anxiety always marks the first-day introduction to any new sport: uncertainty about whether one’s level of fitness is equal to that of the other students and questions about just how macho the instructor might be. That Saturday, everything turned out fine.

Standing around the boat launch area, we costumed ourselves in wet suits, kayaking jackets, spray skirts and life vests. Then, after some scrambling for this or that brand of kayak (Nimbus, Aquaterra or Necky), we shoved out into the calm waters of the estuary to learn the fundamentals--the basic strokes, how to get back in the kayak after you’ve fallen out and how to rescue someone else. Under Gillet’s patient tutelage, we gradually relaxed.

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By afternoon, we were competent enough to make an extended expedition into the marshlands at the far end of the estuary. We paddled several miles down winding channels and among high grasses. Protected from the wind, the water was calm, the channels, narrow and shallow. Never more than five feet from the banks, I understood why Gillet liked Estero Beach for beginners’ lessons. Compared to the one-day beginners’ classes his firm offers on San Diego’s Mission Bay, Mexico allowed a whole intensive weekend, with both flat water and surf.

Sunburned and more conventionally attired, we gathered later that evening in the hotel’s restaurant, Las Terrazas. The most pressing question was whether to skip the menu’s many conventional Mexican offerings in favor of the chicken and red snapper that the staff was grilling on barbecues set up outside. Gillet recommended the chicken and it was tasty.

Sunday was the worst possible day to take our lessons up to the next level, to move out of the calm waters of the estuary and into the Pacific. Though it was sunny, the former surfers, Gary and Tom, noted that gusting winds, riptides and crosscurrents were creating near-impossible conditions. Gillet, however, was an engine of dedication and responsibility, chasing this way and that, coaxing the 12 of us up the coastline like so many ducklings. Meanwhile, we rolled over with consistent regularity.

The day before we had learned that when you roll over, you don’t remain suspended upside down, fumbling in an underwater panic to release some sort of seat belt. Instead, quite naturally, when you go over, you exit and swim free. Since we were in shallow water near the beach, that meant wading ashore, emptying water out of the kayak, and heading out again. After a while, it got to be fun.

At the end of the Sunday afternoon session, we showered and changed at the hotel campground. On our drive back, we stopped at La Cazuela del Mole, a restaurant across from the police station in Rosarito, and had a fabulous dinner of mole enchiladas and sweet tamales. Gillet, we imagined, was probably wolfing down granola bars that he’d stashed in his truck. Still, if he had the time, we believed, he would have stopped at a place like this.

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Budget for Three

Kayak lessons: $375.00

Hotel Estero Beach, two nights: 158.84

Meals: 207.13

Gas, Mexican car insurance: 51.05

FINAL TAB: $792.02

Southwest Sea Kayaks, 2590 Ingraham St., San Diego, CA 92109; tel. (619) 222-3616. Hotel Estero Beach, tel. 011-526-176-6230.