I’m taking you to a blowhole.  I know – you just say, “What?!?!”  La Bufadora is a marine geyser on the Punta Banda Peninsula in Baja California, Mexico.  My friend Kat and I ventured out from Ensenada on a beautiful Saturday morning.  She knows the area so I just got to sit back and take in the scenery.  La Bufadora is about 20 miles (40 minutes) from downtown Ensenada.  Once we were out of the city and starting to climb on a narrow winding road, I marveled at the sustainable fishing practices going on in the bay and the panoramic cliff-top view of Ensenada, All Saints Bay, and Todos Santos Island.

We arrived at La Bufadora early and missed the typical crowds.  I highly recommend getting there by 9am to enjoy the marine geyser without a crowd.  After parking, we walked through a touristy area of shops and restaurants catering to the cruise crowds.  At the end, we walked down some stairs and were greeted with a thunderous roar.  That’s La Bufadora.

We laughed and the few children there squealed as the waterspout reached heights of close to 100 feet.  There were quite a few oohs and aahs as we all delighted in the rainbows forming briefly in the finally seconds of mist.

We only had about 10 other people taking in this natural wonder while we were there.

The marine geyser is created when ocean waves and air are sucked into an underwater cave.  As the water recedes, the trapped air forces the water to shoot upward with a roaring surge.  As we watched, sometimes the sprays were seconds apart and other times it was a few minutes.

This is Mexico, so of course, there has to be a legend (which I love!).  The legend of “The Bufadora” was conjured up by whalers over a century ago and goes like this:  one night a baby whale left its mother to explore a mysterious underwater cavern.  Since a calf whale grows quickly, by morning it was too big to squeeze through the crevice-like entrance of the cave.  Whalers saw a small spray rising from the cave and heard the frightened sobs of the trapped baby whale.  As the years passed the spouts and cries grew bigger.  According to the legend, the tumultuous spray is the now-grown whale blowing his spout and the thunderous noise is its cries, hence the name “La Bufadora” or “The Blowhole.”