San Diego to El Rosario

We left San Diego at a reasonable hour and after getting off of the freeway enjoyed a pleasant drive on a 2 lane highway to Tecate. Crossing into Mexico was straight forward, perhaps a bit too straightforward. We ended up in downtown Tecate without actually stopping at the border (we tried to, really) and dealing with any immigration formalities. This outcome seemed likely to be fraught with downstream issues so we then dealt with the next most challenging item which was finding a parking place so that we could walk back to the border. Eventually, after much persistence we found the right office at the border and dealt with a very pleasant official and ultimately ended up with the required visas in our passports. Back to the car and then onward to Ensenada.
Following advice from the GPS resulted in taking highway 2 to Tijuana rather than the allegedly more scenic (but slower) highway 3. Nonetheless we bypassed Tijuana and stopped for lunch in an ocean side eatery in La Salina. Beautiful!

Continuing south through Ensenada and then through a bunch of other small places the road shrank from four lanes to two lanes but was still generally very good. Not much traffic, only one construction site and two military checkpoints. We were only required to stop at the second where we explained we were on vacation and sent on our way.
The road continued to be very good and certainly much better than many roads in New Zealand that are more heavily travelled. We passed through many small places where the highway was the only paved road and it had large speed bumps to tame traffic through the town. We also passed by massive sun screened fields producing the copious Mexican field crops that are so abundant in most North American supermarkets.
We rolled into El Rosario at about 6 PM. Having left San Diego at 9, it turned out to be a long day. Slight disappointment was encountered when the recommended Lobster Burritos were not available at the highly recommended Mama’s, the restaurant next to the motel. This outcome being highly reminiscent of the closed Cozy Dog Drive In encountered in Springfield, Illinois where we had hoped to consume a corn dog in the establishment where they were invented. So in el Rosario we had some delicious tacos instead!