An unexpected Mexican coast discovery | ajc.com
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An unexpected Mexican coast discovery
By TASGOLA KARLA BRUNER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/04/04
CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Even a beach can be stressful — if it's the wrong beach for you.
On the beaches and sidewalks here, vendors, restaurant hosts and deal closers assault you with sales pitches just when you start thinking about relaxing.
Tasgola Karla Bruner/Staff- The Spanish Mission architecture and Mexican tile floors are reasons to visit the Hotel California in Todos Santos, Mexico.
IF YOU GO
Getting there
• Expect to pay about $600-$700 for airfare to San José del Cabo, but specials are available. We went for $400 a person in low season. Delta and American have connecting flights from Atlanta. The shuttle from the airport to Cabo San Lucas is about $20 per person. Buses to Todos Santos, operated by two companies, La Paz and Aguila, are punctual and reliable.
Getting around
• We found Octavio Aviles Espinoza, a reliable, prompt driver in Cabo. He can be found in his van across from the Las Fuentes restaurant, a place where other kind souls will help you.
Where to stay
• Hotel California: The Todos Santos hotel has new owners who plan to have air conditioning installed by next summer. Meanwhile, ceiling fans and floor fans — and Pacific breezes — will keep guests comfortable. Temperatures in winter and spring aren't as sweltering as they were in August during our visit. Rates are $75 to $150 (summer), $110 to $195 (winter, Nov. 22 to end of May). For reservations, e-mail E-mail or call 011-52-612-145-0525.
• Hotel Todos Santos: The hotel features lovely, clean, air-conditioned rooms. Rates are $55 (June-October) and $65 (November-May). For reservations, call 011-52-612-14-50009 or e-mail E-mail. Online: Web site.
• Siesta Suites Hotel: To its credit, the hotel is a modest, clean, centrally located, charming oasis of warmth and hospitality in Cabo. AJ's Hideaway, the restaurant on the grounds, has fine food and a friendly and warm staff. You can't beat it for value, but it's really more a hotel for folks who come to Cabo to fish and need a cheap place to stay. $39.95 per night, single occupancy; $50 for double, plus 12 percent tax. Weekly rates available. For reservations, call Carla at 602-331-1354 in the United States. Siesta Suites Hotel, P.O. Box 9416-85068, Phoenix AZ 85020. E-mail: E-mail. 011-52-624-143-2773, Web site.
It was the allure of a cheap flight that initially made this tourist hot spot in the state of Baja California Sur seem appealing. About 800,000 visitors a year come here for the endless days of cloudless sunshine and dry desert heat with a splash of Pacific on the side.
The town is at the southernmost point of Baja. Twenty years ago it was a quiet, nearly inaccessible fishing village with a population of about 2,000. Today the population is about 25,000, and the city is teeming with tourist spots, restaurants, bars, time-share condos, and all the usual seaside resort attractions, from parasailing to guided snorkel tours to open-bar boats that, for $40, will carry you offshore to watch the sun set while you drink and float.
The photos of Cabo on the Internet showed white sand, blue ocean, green palm trees. What could go wrong?
Cabo, with its busy tourist venues and late-night clubbing, wasn't the authentic Mexican beach town we'd envisioned. Aside from the commercialism, many of the beaches are unswimmable because of a brutal undertow. We stumbled onto the town we were looking for 40 miles away in Todos Santos.
A $5, one-hour bus ride north of Cabo on two-lane Mexico 19 was our salvation. (A visit there was suggested by a former shower door company owner we met at AJ's Hideaway, the restaurant at our Cabo hotel.)
We took a day trip the first time we went and fell in love with the place. And that was before we'd even been to the beaches.
You can get the bus to Todos Santos every hour from either of two bus stations in Cabo. The ride, with desert views on one side and casual glimpses of the Pacific Ocean on the other, made us feel as if we were finally seeing Mexico. As one Cabo hotel manager put it: Todos Santos is "more Mexican."
Todos Santos ("All Saints" in Spanish) sits on a low plateau at the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna, from which flow underground springs that feed fresh water to the town, once an agricultural center.
After brown miles of desert on Mexico 19, you'll suddenly see palms and mango groves on the sides of the road and sense you have found an oasis. And, to us, it was.
The town (population 3,800) is green. And because refreshing Pacific breezes rush up from the coast and across the hills and channel into town, on hot days the temperature in Todos Santos can be 10 degrees lower than Cabo.
Artful diversions
We got off the bus hungry and heard a group of shoppers speaking about Pilar's Fish Tacos, an outdoor restaurant a few doors down from the bus station. We decided to go there. No screens on the place, so we ate quickly, shooing flies the whole time. Then we set out on foot to explore the center of town, about 10 square blocks.
The streets of Todos Santos are lazy, mostly paved, though dusty. It was a relief not to be accosted by panhandlers. We were immediately charmed by the town's low-pressure, artful aesthetic.
Todos is home to many expatriate American painters and sculptors, and their work is on display and for sale at a handful of galleries on streets running off the town square. We looked inside Galeria de Todos Santos, Galeria La Coronela and Galeria N.E. Hayles — and dropped out just about as quickly. Our budget didn't include $600 paintings. There are a couple of nice shops with Day of the Dead-type tin artwork, pottery and sculpture at rates comparable to shops in the United States.
Summer is low season because of the heat in Baja California Sur, so we were practically the only tourists in town. But locals were uniformly friendly and not pushy. The tables had been delightfully flipped. We had to approach them about where to eat, drink and shop.
We learned quickly, in talking to locals, that night life is mainly quiet dinners and a few drinks at a few restaurants. After dark, Todos Santos gets tucked away.
On the square we found a 1930s cinema, which was closed, and went inside the old Spanish Mission church, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, that towers over the plaza. (Jesuits established a mission here in 1723.)
A few blocks away we stopped in at Nevería Rocco ice cream shop. Then we strolled over to the Casa de la Cultura museum and courtyard.
It houses intriguing, though modest, displays of local artifacts and the history of the region, including photos of the first settlers, a skull of a syphilis victim and a somewhat vitriolic essay on the town's Hotel California.
So much for the myth
The essay debunked the myth that the hotel inspired the Eagles song by the same name. We decided to return a second time to Todos Santos, this time for an overnight stay, and investigate for ourselves.
Hotel California employees were more than willing to perpetuate the myth — convincingly enough to feel a chill on a sultry night.
During a candlelit dinner in the hotel's garden, night manager Giovanni Espinoza simply said: "It has become controversial. Is it, or is it not, the same Hotel California as the song? Only [the Eagles] can answer that question."
(In fact, they have. Don Henley, when asked once about whether he or the band had visited or written the song about the hotel, said: "I can tell you unequivocally that neither myself nor any of the other band members have had any sort of association — business or pleasure — with that establishment." In another interview he said: " 'Hotel California' was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles. It was meant to be a metaphor for the United States, for the excesses this country has always been known for.")
Nevertheless, local folklore includes a story about an Eagles band member who fell in love with a local girl at a sugar cane pickers dance. When he went looking for her, he learned that she had been dead for some time. This woman supposedly inspired the song.
The story is believable, Espinoza said, because Baja California Sur is full of stories about a woman who shows up at local dances even though she is dead.
And in Hotel California itself, he said, the staff has seen a mysterious lady who wanders the hallways, entering the hotel even though the doors are locked. People think she is Doña Rosa de Villa Puente. She donated 10 pesos — what in the mid-1700s was a lot of money — to build the Nuestra Señora del Pilar. She is said to come check on her "investment." From the look of the peeling paint on the outside of the church, I would imagine she's not too pleased.
Another explanation for her walking around the hotel at night might be because it's too hot to sleep. The Spanish Mission architecture and Mexican tile and the beautifully decorated rooms are all well and good, but for $95 a night, one would expect some air conditioning, in the summer months especially. Try to get a room facing the Pacific to get the breeze off the ocean. We survived the heat by sleeping on damp towels.
Or, you could stay at Hotel Todos Santos, where rooms with air conditioning run around $55. We might have stayed there if, on the day we arrived on the bus from Cabo, the proprietors hadn't gone surfing, as a note on the front door indicated. That's part of the charm of this artists colony.
Beaches worth the trip
But all was forgiven when we traveled Todos Santos' miles of undeveloped, virgin beaches. The four nearest beaches to Todos Santos are Playa Punta Lobos, Playa San Pedro (also known as Las Palmas), Playa San Pedrito and Playa Los Cerritos. The only beaches recommended by locals for swimming are San Pedro and Los Cerritos. At San Pedrito, you can rent space to camp and there is also a bar, Gypsy's by the Sea.
Our favorite was the Playa San Pedro, which is about six miles south of Todos Santos and costs $20 round trip by cab. You pick how long you want to stay on the beach and the cabdriver will pick you up and return you to town. The beach closes by dark and no camping is allowed.
San Pedro is a beautiful, eighth-of-a-mile long, isolated beach on the Pacific on an inlet that is shielded on the north and south by rock outcroppings. This allows sand to gather and descend into the ocean gradually so it has a gently sloping ocean floor with no dangerous riptides or undertows, unlike other Pacific Ocean beaches, such as some in Cabo.
There is a verdant freshwater lagoon, home to ducks, palm trees and small fish. Take a dip there to wash off the salt water and you'll feel refreshed. You may see Mexicans coming by with buckets to catch minnows to take home or surf with Boogie boards.
We were delighted and surprised to see a band of horses trot past the ocean surf, eventually pausing at the lagoon to munch on greens and sip a bit of fresh water.
If only we had known of this hidden treasure, a vacation from the vacation, we would have spent the entire week in Todos Santos.
LESSONS LEARNED
1. We chose a hotel that required us to pay for the entire stay ahead of time, which left us little flexibility to alter our plans and stay a couple of days in Todos Santos.
2. We assumed you could swim the portion of the Pacific Ocean that meets the Sea of Cortez at the tip of Cabo San Lucas. Conversations with the locals and time-share salespeople made it clear that not all of Cabo's beaches are "swimmable." That, we learned, explains why many tourists prefer to go there to take boats out and fish. Cabo is one of the best fishing spots for marlin and other big game fish. One trip to a beach near a newly built resort was a close call. An undertow knocked my traveling companion down, and another wave washed over him, and he was suddenly disoriented and under 5 feet of water. I wasn't as far in the water, but the force of waves still knocked me around enough to scrape and slightly bloody my knees as I struggled to walk away. We made our escape to our towels only to have what we heard referred to as a "sneaker" wave jump to our spot on the beach and start to pull our belongings into the ocean. While guidebooks may say some local beaches in Cabo are safe year-round, visitors should be aware that currents can be treacherous and some of the beaches drop off within 10 feet of the shore. If you grew up visiting the beaches of Florida, be aware that Cabo's powerful waves are bullies of another magnitude.
3. During the summer, Cabo is suffocatingly hot. It's best enjoyed as a winter getaway.
4. Don't assume you can escape the commercialism and Americanism of Cabo simply by avoiding certain areas of town. They are everywhere — vendors, time-share salespeople, deal makers. On the eight-block walk from the harbor to our hotel, we made a bet about how many times we'd be accosted by vendors and street hawkers. I said eight; my companion said 15. It turned out to be 17 and that was with us using evasive tactics that included dodging through traffic and cutting through a corner restaurant.
5. Parts of Mexico are as expensive, if not more so, than the United States. Greens fees, for instance, at some of Cabo's luxury golf clubs range up to $200. We ate breakfast at an unassuming restaurant on a side street near our hotel and left sated, but $30 poorer.
