ART & ENSENADA : YOU HAVE TO RUN A GAUNTLET OF ARTISANS TO GET TO MEXICO'S LA BUFADORA.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

``Hey, lady, blankets for only $5 - good blankets.''

A young man held up a gray-and-white wool blanket, encouraging me to buy. ``Blue-light special today,'' he grinned. ``Better prices than Kmart.''

Another fellow materialized alongside him, offering tastes of churros, the long, crispy Mexican doughnuts.

``Very good,'' he promised. ``Taste very good. You buy?''

Just off a cruise ship with only a few hours to kill, a group of us had signed up for a tour of Ensenada that included a trip to the famed La Bufadora blowhole, one of three such natural wonders in the world. But to reach the rocky coastline, we had to run a gantlet of vendors that stretched for more than 100 yards.

In the open-front stalls were leather handbags and suitcases, baskets, colorful dresses and shirts, pottery and ceramics, silver and beaded jewelry, serapes and blankets, carved marble chess sets and paintings for sale at prices that ranged from a few dollars for trinkets to $15 for tablecloths and $64 for leather vests. Over the mercado wafted the aromas from a half-dozen stands selling tamales and the ubiquitous fish tacos the fishing town of Ensenada is famous for.

Vendors were English-speaking and good-natured, but persistent, jovially complaining about the quality of other sellers' goods while extolling the virtues of their own.

And amid the cacaphony of commerce, a handful of Mexican artisans sat quietly beneath fabric canopies or perched on rock steps, producing unique artwork.

A middle-age Indian woman who said her name was Margarita patiently used a needle and thread to string multicolored beads into necklaces and bracelets. On a loom at home, she said, she wove the fabric for the colorful cloth bags she displayed on a clothesline that hung above her finished jewelry.

``My mother taught me how to do these things many years ago, and her mother taught her,'' Margarita said through an interpreter. ``It's what I do to make money for my family.''

A few stalls away, Samuel, a bearded glassblower with a big grin, used an acetylene torch to melt rods of glass, taking five minutes or less to add tourists' names to fragile sculptures of whales, elephants, birds and other creatures he had already crafted.

Working in glass was a skill he had never aspired to learn, he said.

``A friend who came and stayed in my house about 15 years ago was from Puebla, where they blow glass,'' he said. ``He taught me how to do this. I've been at La Bufadora doing this ever since.''

Across the road, Guadalupe, her hands covered with paint, sat decorating the insides of shells with artwork. She dipped her right index finger into globs of paint daubed on a cardboard palette, then used her fingernail to etch thin lines into the interior of the shell, her fingertip to smudge and blend colors.

A painting of the Mexican desert, with dark green cactuses standing out against a multihued salmon sunset, gradually took shape as she added more color, daubing in increasingly narrow lines and tiny accents.

``My brother is an artist in Mexico City, and he taught me to do this,'' Guadalupe said. ``It took me about a year to learn. It's very cheap - all I need is the paint and the shells; I don't spend money on brushes.''

What happens when she breaks a nail? She smiled for the first time. ``I just use another one - after all, there are nine more. And the broken ones grow out. I've always got what I need to work.''

Although the artisans' work takes many hours to complete, they sell it for very little: Guadalupe asked $5 for her shell paintings, Samuel sold his glass sculptures for $1 to $5, Margarita's jewelry was priced starting at a few dollars, while the woven bags sold for $8.

The crafts people are typical of many Mexican artisans who use inexpensive materials to produce true native artwork that is rarely sold in shops, said Guillermo Valenzuela, our tour guide. Other artisans walk the streets of Ensenada's downtown shopping district, selling jewelry and beadwork from baskets or boxes they carry balanced on one hip.

``It doesn't cost a lot to live here and they can make enough to support their families,'' he said. ``They really depend on the tourist dollar.''

Gabriel Huerta, a spokesman for the Mexican Government Tourist Office in Los Angeles, said two cruise liners call at Ensenada almost every Saturday, making a one-day stop before returning to San Pedro. And tourists usually make a beeline for La Bufadora and its flea market.

``Everybody who goes to Ensenada goes to La Bufadora,'' he said. ``And those small shops have been there for many years. There's a lot of competition to get a spot, because it's where the tourists go. You have to have a permit from the government. But it's a good place to sell things.''

Reaching La Bufadora and its flea market takes dedication. They lie 19 miles south of the city along a dangerous mountain road with no guard rails, but gorgeous scenery.

All this just to see water spout through a hole in a rock!

The geyser, about 60 yards past the flea market, spouts at irregular intervals, driven by the rise and fall of the waves and the tides. There are a slanted walkway and a stairway leading down to two overlooks - one about 15 feet higher than the other, a better vantage point and a drier observation spot - where visitors gather to wait for the eruptions.

A few seconds before the water shoots through the blowhole, the ground begins to rumble (it feels a little bit like an earthquake) and a roaring sound begins to build. As the roar grows louder and the earth shakes, the spray shoots skyward; the crowd responds with an ``Aaaaah!'' then retreats from the brick railing as the wind blows the spray their way.

A few seconds later - or maybe a few minutes, depending on the tide - it all happens again.

The scientific explanation for La Bufadora is simple: A deep underwater canyon leads to a cave in the cliff, gouged out over millions of years by the pounding surf. The sea water flows through the undersea canyon, where it collides with trapped air, then the mixture of water and air explodes upward through the blowhole.

Those are the facts. But the fiction - two legends handed down over generations by Ensenada residents - is more fun.

One tale claims the water spout is caused by a sea serpent, grown old and grumpy, who sends an angry shoot of water up to protest the presence of visitors to his domain.

The other explanation is that a baby whale came to explore the undersea cave, staying all night. But a whale calf grows very fast, and during his stay, he grew too big to squeeze through the narrow opening, so still remains imprisoned in the cavern, full-grown and sadly shooting water from his blowhole.

Both tales are fanciful - but more entertaining than fish tacos and $5 blankets.

On Location

Ensenada, a fishing village-turned-tourist town, is about 60 miles south of the U.S.-Mexican border on the coast of Baja California. To reach La Bufadora, take Ejercito Nacional, the Transpeninsular Highway, southwest to Maneadero and north onto the Punta Banda Peninsula. La Bufadora lies at the tip of the peninsula.

On the peninsula overlooking the sea, visitors can rent a house, a boat or a surfboard, or stop for a fish taco or a tamale at one of more than two dozen stands that line the road on the way to the blowhole.

Half-day guided tours leave from downtown (check with any hotel concierge for information), wend through Ensenada and stop for a while at La Bufadora. Our tour, in a mini-bus with a bilingual native tour guide with a wicked sense of humor, cost $13 per person.

For information about Ensenada sightseeing, call the Ensenada Tourism Office, [phone], or the Mexican Government Tourism Office in Los Angeles at [phone].

?13- Carol Bidwell

Outtakes

Ensenada was a sleepy fishing village until thirsty Americans, their thirst for liquor foiled by Prohibition in the 1930s, headed south, where Bahia Todos Santos (All Saints Bay) was a safe harbor for rumrunners.

Hollywood film stars particularly liked to fly or drive south to drink and gamble at Riviera del Pacifica - the old Riviera Club - managed by fighter Jack Dempsey and reputedly owned by gangland kingpin Al Capone.

The old casino still stands (at Boulevard Lazaro Cardenas - sometimes called Boulevard Costero - and Avenida Riviera), but it is respectable these days: Its Mediterranean architecture now houses Centro Civico, Social y Cultural, a cultural center with an art gallery, a museum and gardens filled with historical monuments. Many civic and social events are held there.

It's worth driving by the Plaza Civica - also called Plaza de la Tres Cabezas (Plaza of the Three Heads) - an oceanside park with three giant bronze sculptures of the heads of Mexican heroes Benito Juarez, the first Indian to become the country's president in 1867; Miguel Hidalgo, a priest who sparked the 1810 rebellion against French invaders; and Venustiano Carranza, a revolutionary leader who helped depose a despotic governor in 1914.

Visitors also can take a tour of Bodegas de Santo Tomas (Avenida Miramar 666), the oldest and biggest winery in Mexico, founded in 1888, and check out the loud music and clustered Americans at Hussong's Cantina (Avenida Ruiz 113) or Papas & Beer (across the street from Hussong's on Avenida Ruiz north of Avenida Lopez Mateos), the town's two hottest, raunchiest nightspots.

Ensenada also has its share of museums. You can drop by the town's old jail, a fortresslike structure (on Avenida Gastelum south of Avenida Lopez Mateos) that now houses the Regional History Museum and the Native Artisans Workshop, and visit the Museo de Ciencias de Ensenada (at Avenida Obregon 1463), which houses nine exhibit halls including saltwater aquariums, a real boat converted into a miniature Noah's Ark and other science exhibits.

The Estero Beach Museum, at the Estero Beach Resort six miles south of the city, has a fascinating private collection of Mexican and Indian artifacts and artworks.

If you're in the market for Mexican pottery, weaving, jewelry, artwork, beadwork or other items, Avenida Lopez Mateos is crammed with shops. Tour guides recommend a newly opened supermarket - El Gigante, with at least two locations in town - as the best place to buy tequila, Kahlua and other liquor much cheaper than in the U.S.

U.S. Customs regulations allow each adult American visiting Mexico to bring back, duty-free, purchases with a value totaling $400 or less, including one liter of an alcoholic beverage. Purchases over that amount require payment of Customs duty or Internal Revenue tax.

If you visit Ensenada by cruise ship, a visitor information center on the dock will help you arrange for tours; there's a duty-free liquor store there, along with a gift shop and a pharmacy.

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--2--Color) Above, the sea rushes onto the rocks at Ensenada's La Bufadora. Below, a tourist snaps a quick photo before the deluge from the blowhole.

(3--Color) A glass blower puts the finishing touches on a handmade sculpture.

(4) Shops and vendors' stands line the route from the parking area to the La Bufadora blowhole.

(5) An artist uses her fingernails and fingertips to etch scenes inside shells at La Bufadora.

(6) Ensenada's old jail now houses a workshop for local artisans.

Carol Bidwell/Daily News

Box: (1) On Location (See Text)

(2) Outtakes (See Text)