About 30 minutes or so from the Port in Encenada

There is a little village, I guess you would call it, called 'La Bufadora' which is essentially a strip of road densely packed on either side with market sellers of food and various items. It is really just a hill leading up to a blow hole in the ocean.

Were were on a 5 day cruise this week which went from LA Harbor all the way down to Cabo San Lucas for a day, then back up for a stop in Encenada. There really isn't a whole lot to do close by as far as I could tell, so we got a ride to La Bufadora with a tour guide who couldn't speak a word of English.

He was really nice, but it was a bit awkward because I was the only person in the group who could speak Spanish so I was translating for everyone. I was super tired and didn't really feel like it, but I obliged anyway. Since I am just a white dude from Ohio I can easily pretend to not know Spanish, but @afturner called me out, so basically I was forced to be the unofficial translator. It would have been fine but I have to admit that I felt a bit sick from the windy ride, plus @little-ricky was screaming his little head off in my lap while kicking and screaming at other passengers. Fun!

In the above photo, you can see us walking toward the area where the water explodes high into the air every 20-30 seconds or so. Of course I didn't time it, but that is my horrible guess. Let's just say it does it over and over again. Sometimes the water only comes up a little bit, other times it really sprays! It can look quite impressive!

I was having a surprisingly hard time getting a decent photo of the water spraying. Suffice it to say that there were some impressive bufs/blows. I don't know why, but bufadora sounds a bit dirty to me. Of course, this is just my warped mind.

It's hard to keep a straight face while trying to describe this experience. Anyway, the views from la Bufadora are certainly quite breathtaking. The downside, depending on how you look at it, is 100s of people yelling at you relentlessly trying to get you to buy things.

Even after you buy a big sack of churros, everyone else is still trying to sell you more churros claiming that theirs are better. So you have to keep a good balance of being polite while not engaging with every single person who is putting bags of things in your face. I may sound a bit like a Debbie downer, and I do appreciate that everyone is trying to make a buck, but I felt super overwhelmed. Especially since I mostly keep to myself when I am at home!

In summary, La Bufadora is a cool place to visit if you are in Encenada and looking for places to go and see. However, I can't really recommend going there with one of the tours if you are there on a cruise ship. I'd say if you are in Mexico on your own with your own car it would be a better idea.

For instance, they tried to sell us the excursion from the ship and they wanted $75 each. That was for me, Amanda and our 2 year old. However, when we got off of the ship, there was a guy there who offered it to us for $50 total. Although everyone was super nice, this was the most disorganized tour that I've ever been on. To be fair, this was apparently the tour guides 3rd day and he was pretty clueless.

That all being said, if I were driving around Mexico and happened to be staying in Encenada, I'd certainly drive up there myself and spend an hour or so checking out La Bufadora. There is a great little restaurant there and a tequila shop where they have free tasting. But there just isn't enough to do there to spend an hour packed in a van with way too many people just to be hard sold piña coladas by 20 guys screaming in your face for 2 hours - which tasted fantastic by the way. But they really skimped on the alcohol!

Ok, this is my most mixed feeling review of a place that I've ever made. I hope that I've not confused people too much. Mexico is an absolutely beautiful country with a lot to offer. As a general matter, I cannot recommend it enough. Personally, if I were on my own I'd try to find places where there aren't so many tourists!