Ensenada, Mexico

Ensenada is the closest Mexican cruise port to the United States, about 110 km south of the border, and it appears most often as the single foreign call on a three or four-night sailing from Los Angeles, Long Beach or San Diego. For a group testing whether a cruise suits them, that short format is the main reason to come here.

The town is compact and the berth is at the edge of it, so this is one of the few Mexican Riviera ports where a group can simply walk off and explore without arranging transport. Avenida López Mateos is a few minutes away, and the harbour fish market — where the Baja fish taco is plausibly claimed to have been invented — is closer still.

The genuinely unexpected thing here is the wine. The Valle de Guadalupe, about an hour inland, produces the large majority of Mexican wine and has grown into a serious food and wine destination with modern wineries and well-regarded restaurants. It takes most of a port call and is nothing like the rest of the itinerary.

La Bufadora is the conventional excursion: a sea cave that fires a spout of water up to 30 metres when the swell is right. It is genuinely impressive on a good day and underwhelming on a calm one, and the approach runs a long gauntlet of souvenir stalls.

Mediterranean rather than tropical — mild, dry summers and cool, damp winters. Days run 18–24°C for much of the year. It is noticeably cooler than Cabo and often overcast in the morning.