Three Faces of Cabo
by Robert B. Simmonds
Robert Simmonds, Ph.D., is a
psychologist practicing in San Diego, the publisher of Mexico
File, and the brother of Dave Simmonds, the editor. He muses on
his first trip to Cabo. He can be reached at
[email protected] This is the first part of a
two-part series.
“You can check out any time you
like, but you can never leave....”
– The Eagles, from The Hotel California
This was my first trip down to
Cabo. My brother, Dave, had warned me, clucking his tongue like
all of his Mexico afficionado friends do when they talk about
Cabo, that it’s the most expensive place in all of Mexico and
that they’re spoiling both the land and Mexican culture down
there. I kept hearing that it’s just like Southern California in
Cabo. I may as well go to Newport Beach. On the other hand, Dave
said that he has a wonderful time every time he goes to Cabo –
and he never fails to mention that he used to go camping on the
beach, back in the old days, decades ago, on the very spot where
they now have a big luxury resort. And there was also the chorus
of alarms that I heard, both before I flew down there and during
my trip, about the new Costco that just opened in Cabo San Lucas
– proof that there is no way that Mexican culture could possibly
survive the always-encroaching American onslaught. I mean, they
make it sound like the Huichol vases are going to get crushed
under the oversized jars of marinated artichoke hearts.
Fortunately, culture isn’t an either/or proposition. It just is
what it is.
Still, there was no way I was
going to miss seeing Carmel.
I laugh better with Carmel than
with any other person on the planet – gutsplitting laughter, the
kind where you know you shouldn’t behave like this in public.
I’ve known Carmel for over thirty years, but hadn’t seen her in
18 years. She used to live in my apartment and gave my life a
very happy tone. We were the best of friends. We both left
Ithaca, New York, in time. She ended up a nurse living in Staten
Island, and I came to San Diego and opened a psychology
practice. She emailed me that she had to use her miles up before
the end of 2003 and that she had booked a room at the Plaza las
Glorias in Cabo San Lucas – and why don’t Cheryl and I come down
to see her there. Cheryl opted out – she needed to work and
dogsit. I called Dave to find me a room and he got me one at the
Pueblo Bonito Blanco.
I flew on Aeromexico from San
Diego to Cabo. I had always heard that this was a superb
airline, but didn’t really understand the concept until this
flight. And what makes it special is, well, Mexican culture.
There is a friendly and gentle mood among the airline staff. The
frenetic tension I usually experience on an airplane was
missing. The flight was filled with US citizens set to have a
good time and Mexican nationals, for whom a good time is a
given. Breakfast was served on our two-hour flight, and the food
was fairly good. Interestingly, they served drinks with alcohol
for free. I had a window seat and sat mesmerized by the blank
and empty land below me as we flew straight down the Baja
peninsula. There were very few roads cutting across the brown
land below. We flew over Tijuana and saw the playas and the
bullring, then the bustle of Rosarito Beach. I saw the enormity
of Magdalena Bay but couldn’t see any gray whales, although this
is the time of year they would be there. I could see Loreto
after we sliced across the peninsula and ended up flying over
the Sea of Cortez. And before I knew it we landed at San Jose
del Cabo and the pilot announced, on December 3, that it was 93
degrees on the ground. (Note that the average temperature in
Cabo this time of the year is normally about 75 degrees, so
these were heat-wave conditions.)
First Face: Paradise (Cabo San
Lucas)
Despite Cabo’s reputation for
being expensive, I rented a VW Beetle, the old kind, white and
clean and funky looking, from National for $133 for the week.
Had I gotten a convertible I would have paid over three times
that amount. From the airport I drove south down Route 1 (yes,
the same highway that goes in the other direction up the nearly
thousand mile peninsula to the border crossing at San Ysidro),
bypassing the main part of San Jose del Cabo. It’s really the
only highway in Baja. There, to my left, was the deep blue hue
of the Sea of Cortez as I traveled along what is called the
Corridor, the 18-mile four-lane highway between San Jose and San
Lucas. The Corridor is lined with resort hotels and condo
complexes, some of them among the finest in Mexico. This is what
people complain about when they say that Cabo is overbuilt and
Americanized. The hotels are nicely spaced apart now, but in
years to come the Corridor might well become more congested,
lined with one building after the next. The road is not very
safe by disciplined American standards. There is construction in
places, it’s poorly marked, and cars race by at American freeway
speeds – especially from my perspective in my little chugging
along Beetle. Surprises hit you frequently. Finding the Pueblo
Bonito Blanco was a breeze once I got near Cabo San Lucas.
And there is was – Paradise. From
my hotel I would look out onto the blue waters of the Sea of
Cortez and right in front of me (and maybe a mile away), so
close, it seemed, that I could reach out and touch it, was
Land’s End, the famous large rock at the very tip of the Baja
Peninsula. On my side was the Sea of Cortez. On the other side
of Land’s End was the Pacific Ocean. This is one of the most
beautiful spots on the planet. I had a ground floor room (I
somehow got upgraded from a junior suite to an executive suite)
with a beautiful patio overlooking palm trees, immaculately
groomed grounds, a rambling swimming pool with an island in the
middle of it and waterfalls – and, get this, just a couple of
feet in front of me on the green lawn were pink flamingos. Real
live flamingos. I spent hours in reverie watching these birds.
(I won’t go into how my wife, Cheryl, is a flamingo freak and
how our house is filled with flamingo everything – she should
have been on this trip.) Yes, Pueblo Bonito Blanco is
artificially created, but it’s perhaps the nicest hotel I’ve
ever stayed at. They have created Paradise and I loved being
there.
I met Carmel at six o’clock that
night, a very happy reunion, at her hotel, Plaza las Glorias,
the oldest of the resort hotels in San Lucas, an enormous
building and located on the marina. Incidentally, San Lucas is a
small town, but it took me an embarrassing forty-five minutes of
driving to find her hotel the first time, even though it’s only
a mile from Pueblo Bonito Blanco. Things just aren’t marked that
well in Mexico.
Our first dinner, and maybe the
best of the whole trip, was at Mi Casa, a short two blocks from
her hotel . I had a mole poblano which was just heaven, and
Carmel had a fruit plate. Mi Casa is located adjacent to the
central plaza on Calle Cabo San Lucas (624-143-1933). The
open-air interior is beautifully designed to resemble a Mexican
village with murals and authentic decorations. They say that Mi
Casa has the most authentic Mexican food in Cabo, specializing
in regional Mexican cuisine from different parts of Mexico.
Everyone in Cabo, it seems, sells
time-shares. Conversations with the Mexicans are easy to come by
and are usually interesting. In terms of cultural markers, I
noticed that they talked frequently about their families and
where they grew up. Their education or their business
experiences also came up often in conversation. Almost everyone
I talked to came from the mainland of Mexico, many from Mexico
City. They came to Cabo to make money – and that’s where the
time-shares come in. The conversation would inevitably lead to
the questions, “What do you plan to do while you’re in Cabo?
What would you like to do?” I would answer with something like,
“Trying different foods, maybe going horseback riding on the
beach, going out to Land’s End in a glass-bottomed boat,
snorkeling.” That’s where you get hooked. “Oh, I can get you a
boat ride for free.” Or, “I can get you an extra night at your
hotel for free.” And when you agree to the freebie, you find out
that you’ve got to sit through one of these hour and a half
breakfast sales pitches for a time-share. One morning I walked
past perhaps twenty tables of sales pitches going on at the
restaurant at my hotel. (Fortunately, I had the perspicacity to
avoid falling for these deals – but not Carmel: she was psyched
to buy a time-share by the time I met up with her.)
Cabo, they say, is Mexico gone
wrong. They say it’s where Mexican culture breaks down in the
face of the American encroachment. If it weren’t there, Mexico
could be Mexico. I prefer to interpret it as one of the places
where Mexico’s cultural change is most apparent. Mexico is
changing rapidly as it moves from third-world to a modern
country. There are cell phones, PDA’s, and laptops all over the
place. Mexicans have been watching US television for years, and
they emulate the stars and their lifestyles. One young woman I
talked to (who stood in a time-share booth) had no problem with
being thirty and unmarried – and she talked about the ticking of
her biological clock. In fact, she had a rebelliousness in her
tone of voice and she was proud of it. She said her family, on
the mainland, believed in the old ways, but she could never do
that. We gringos lament the loss of the innocence and gentility
that we see in our idealized vision of Mexico and we point to
Cabo and say, “There, there’s the problem; that’s why we’re
losing beautiful old Mexico.” But, in truth, Mexico is going to
change, and is changing, Cabo or no Cabo.
Carmel could almost cry at the
beauty of the Mexican people. I saw much more of what I call
Mexican culture in Cabo than I have ever seen in the Baja Norte
cities of Tijuana and Ensenada. And this is what appealed to
Carmel. She saw a gentleness, a purity of soul in the Mexicans
she talked to – and she trusted in that. Carmel is a believer in
good in the world. Mexicans would invite her to their house on
her next trip down to Cabo, and she would seriously accept their
invitation. Carmel is a love child of the sixties. She would buy
trinkets from little barefoot girls, examining the handcrafted
beauty of each one before making her final selection. And her
attention would focus not so much on what she was buying as on
whom she was buying it from – and their simplicity and calmness.
“If you buy from me, good. If not, that’ll be OK too.” What is,
is.
One day I had a call from Carmel.
Let’s meet up. I said I would walk over to her hotel, along the
beach. I would be there in half an hour. I thought the sand on
the beach would be hard and easy to traverse. Not so. The grains
of sand in Cabo are large, round and smooth. You don’t walk
along the beach, even in the wet part near the water. You
trudge. I go to a gym in San Diego, but I had to rest numerous
times on my walk down the beach to the marina in front of
Carmel’s hotel. And then the dock meandered around so that the
walk turned out to take an hour and a half. I was delayed by a
group of young men who shouted, “Hey, meester, you want some
weed?” When I declined, they said, “You want some blow?” Not
today, thank you. From that time on I drove over to her hotel.
We took a glass-bottomed boat
ride out to Land’s End, one of the nicest experiences of the
trip. We wanted to see the colorful tropical fish in the waters
of Cabo, but we didn’t want to snorkel in order to do it. So, we
met up with Jorge, who, for ten dollars each, took us out (I
also tipped him five dollars at the end of the trip). We saw
parrotfish, trumpetfish – and my memory fails me in naming the
several other species we saw. Sea lions basked on the rocks. The
pelicans had their own pelican rock which they had whitened over
the years. We traveled in the boat past Land’s End from the
warm, greenish waters of the Sea of Cortez to the colder and
clearer water of the Pacific Ocean. On the way back, Jorge, an
expert with his boat, guided us through the narrow opening at
the base of El Arco. Jorge dropped us off at El Melía (the
beautiful, calmer, more Mexican resort right next to Pueblo
Bonito Blanco) and picked up another party for the same trip.
Jorge is becoming a wealthy man.
The spa at Pueblo Bonito is
world-class. Pueblo Bonito Blanco (which is also called Pueblo
Bonito Los Cabos) actually has a sister hotel, Pueblo Bonito Rosé,
right next door – and guests can cross back and forth between the
two. Rosé seems to be more of a time-share building. It, too, is a
paradise, and perhaps more magnificent than Blanco. There is a
black swan in one of the pools. The spa is part of the Rosé
complex. My room at the Blanco got me daily spa passes with full
use of the facilities (otherwise, the cost is $12 per day). This
is pure luxury with an emphasis on relaxation. In fact, they have
a relaxation room with bubbles traveling up the wall and calming
new age music in the background. I enjoyed the steam room, Swedish
showers (where rows of showerheads are aimed at the length of your
body coming from three different directions) and the jacuzzis
(which had ten foot waterfalls pouring into the pools). Massages
and treatments of various kinds cost extra and the prices are
comparable to those in the U.S. (In the interest of telling the
complete story here about Pueblo Bonito, there is actually a newer
third hotel on the Pacific side, Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach. See
the short article by Ann Hazard in this issue.)
I had more shrimp in Cabo than I’ve
ever had anywhere. The shrimp houses are right on the street, open
without windows, with tables of drinkers and shrimp-eaters, and
mariachi bands playing to your soul’s content. I recommend the
Shrimp Factory across the street from Plaza las Glorias and El
Shrimp Bucket on the marina. You buy a kilo or half a kilo of
shrimp and peel away to your heart’s content. (But the very best
shrimp I had was not in Cabo San Lucas, but in San Jose del Cabo
at the Tropicana. Their shrimp cocktail is a masterpiece – clean,
fresh and tasty and, for $9.00, contains about 30 shrimp.)
Three Faces of
Cabo, Part II
by Robert B. Simmonds
Robert Simmonds, Ph.D., is a psychologist
practicing in San Diego, the publisher of
Mexico File,
and the brother of Dave Simmonds, the editor. He muses on his
first trip to Cabo. He can be reached at
[email protected]
This is the
second part of a two-part series.
“You can check out any time you
like, but you can never leave....”
– The Eagles, from The Hotel California
Second Face: Tradition
My original intention in going down to
Cabo, other than visiting with my friend, Carmel, was to do an
article on San Jose del Cabo. Somehow, we at the Mexico File
had failed to do anything on San Jose in the past, and I didn’t
know why. After all, the city is 300 years old and actually has
some history and culture associated with it. And then I found out
why – there’s not all that much to write about. So, my article had
to focus on three different places in the Cabo region, San Lucas,
Todos Santos, and San Jose – three faces of Cabo, each one quite
different from the other two.
San Jose del Cabo is a thriving, small
Mexican city (population about 25, 000). While San Lucas caters to
a younger and partying crowd, a more sedate, perhaps more
experienced, tourist presence is felt in San Jose. The Jesuits in
the 18th century who founded San Jose located it a
couple of kilometers away from the Sea of Cortez, up on a mesa and
closer to the fresh water that flows down from the nearby
mountains – which turned out to be fortuitous since now the hotels
near the water don’t block the view of the sea from the town
(little did the Jesuits know!). Today you can see century-old
buildings throughout the town and the lush greenery makes the town
feel tropical (which is it, actually – it’s below the Tropic of
Cancer by several miles). Employment is provided in the public
service and tourism sectors, and it lures people from all over
Baja California. A good contingent of the population is composed
of foreigners. The lands surrounding San Jose are spotted with
orchards of mangoes, citrus, avocados and bananas. As you get down
nearer to the sea, the architecture turns modern (the houses look
like they belong in very nice parts of California). And the hotels
and time-shares are on the water. Some very impressive condominium
buildings are going up on the hill just south of town. It has the
feel of a laid-back town that’s experiencing a busy period. And it
has a quality feel about it. Things are well built and look nice
(except on the road up to the airport, where you see lots of
concrete blocks, corrugated steel, and dusty streets). There are
many people out on the streets of the central district near the
iglesia and the plaza.
Carmel got an urge to look at some condos while she
was in San Jose, especially since I had been lukewarm on her idea
of getting a time-share. And, coincidentally, as we got out of the
car and headed toward the plaza, there was a Century 21 office. We
looked at some pictures of properties for sale they had posted on
the walls. And out came Paul Geisler to help us. Paul, a diver,
has been living in Cabo for eight years, and he’s now married to a
Mexican and fully established in Mexico. He dives and makes a good
living selling real estate. He has his own business, Dream Homes
of Cabo ([email protected];
website at
www.dreamhomesofcabo.com).
Paul showed Carmel one condo while I wandered by myself up to the
plaza, but she didn’t seem very excited about it, claiming that it
was too dark.
The plaza is surrounded by beautiful
old buildings, many of them now converted to jewelry shops, a few
food establishments and artisan shops. Several of the shops on the
plaza have an impressive selection of high end crafts from Mexican
artists – and true to Cabo’s reputation, the prices are also on
the high end. There’s not much bargaining in San Jose, and to try
is somewhat insulting. After Carmel and I met up again, we had
lunch at the Tropicana, a palapa covered restaurant on Boulevard
Mijares, just a block from the plaza.. I had fish tacos (very
good) and she had a shrimp cocktail (the very best).
The estuary (or Estero San Jose) is a
large lagoon fed by the freshwater Rio San Jose and kept in place
by a sandbar, in normal times. Unfortunately, Cabo was hit by two
hurricanes this past autumn and the sandbar was washed away...and
there went the lagoon, into the Sea of Cortez. We had hoped to
rent a kayak but the water wasn’t deep enough, so we had to resort
to renting horses instead. We found the perfect stable just across
the street (Paseo San José) from the Presidente Inter-Continental
Los Cabos, a very impressive resort hotel. Juan guided us on
horseback up the river and through groves of palms, bamboo, and
marsh grasses. There are about 200 species of birds at the estuary
and we saw birds unlike anything we had seen before (not that
we’re birders, although we both said we’d like to be).
One morning back in San Lucas I met up with Carmel
at Plaza Las Glorias, her hotel, and she said that she had bought
a framed photograph and ... uh ... a condo. She had spent the
early morning with a realtor who took her to the condominiums,
Vista Encanto, in San Jose. This is an edifice of fabulous condos,
brand new, on the hill south of San Jose. Up top is a pool with a
panoramic view of the Sea of Cortez, as well as a restaurant and a
holistic health center. Down below the pool is a mini-deli. Each
condo has a patio with a jacuzzi. Carmel met Francisco Cedano, the
architect, and was so taken with his Mexican honesty,
trustworthiness, and goodness that she signed a contract for a
small condo. (In all fairness, when she got back to New York, she
was advised not to follow through with this...and since the
contract had never been notarized, she was able to get out of it –
and she did, although she still thinks about how happy she would
have been there, a case of nonbuyer’s remorse.) The web address of
these condos is
www.vistaencanto.com.
When we went to see her condo on a separate trip to San Jose, I
met Francisco and he made sure that I had a sample contract to
take back to the States. Francisco is a shrewd businessman.
Third Face: Bliss
Todos Santos is one of those places on
the planet that glows with spiritual energy, and I guess that’s
why so many artistic types make their home there. It’s an old
Mexican town founded in 1724 that is surrounded by orchards of
avocados, citrus, mangoes, papayas, guavas and coconuts that are
irrigated by the fresh water that comes in an underground stream
from the Sierra de la Laguna to the east. It was originally
established by the Jesuits as a farming community to supply the
mission in La Paz with vegetables, fruits, sugarcane and wine. As
is the case with San Jose, the town was built inland by a few
miles, not directly on the ocean, to be closer, I assume, to the
fresh water and for protection against storms that come off of the
Pacific. Todos Santos is cooled by the Pacific breezes, so it’s
about ten degrees F cooler than other spots in Cabo that are
influenced by the warmer Sea of Cortez.
Most of the older buildings in town
have been there for the past 100 to 150 years and the population
today numbers about 6,000. A good number of those are
norteamericanos who comprise the artist’s colony – artists,
surfers, organic farmers, and a seasonal contingent of
Californians from the media world who come down for the winter.
Joe Cummings, the author of the Moon Handbooks on Mexico and the
American who knows more about Mexico than almost anyone, made his
home in Todos Santos before relocating to Australia – a testament
to the special ambience of this small Mexican town.
The Hotel California in Todos Santos has reopened,
and it’s spectacular. They say it’s a myth that the Eagles song
was based on the hotel in Todos Santos – but I choose to believe
it’s not myth, mainly because the ambience of the hotel is so
reflective of the mood of the song. We went into the lobby and
explored. Just as I was opening a door to the rooms, garden and
pool area, thinking we were alone in the lobby, I heard a serene
voice asking if I needed help. This was Debbie Stewart, a Canadian
who recently bought and renovated the hotel with her husband,
John. The hotel has a bar and La Coronela Restaurant and there are
eleven recently renovated rooms for rent, ranging in price from
$75 to $125 in the summer season and from $125 to $175 during the
winter. Contact Debbie and John at
[email protected].
During my conversation with Debbie and John, they described how at
the Hotel California, you can check in but you can’t check out,
referring to a line from the Hotel California song by the Eagles,
and that really stuck with me, even though that wasn’t quite the
line from the song. Once I got back to San Diego, I heard the song
on the clock radio in a half-dreamlike state as I waking up...but
by the time I was fully awake, I had forgotten it. So I wrote to
my good friend, Maryanne Wilson, a MF contributor
living in Manhattan, and she sent me the real last lines from the
song – “You can check out any time you like, but you can never
leave.” And that’s my true feeling about Todos Santos – a part of
my spiritual being resides there and it won’t leave. “Welcome to
the Hotel California, such a lovely place, such a lovely place.”
It’s amazing to find a world-class
Italian restaurant in a small, isolated Mexican village. That’s
the Café Santa Fé located across from the plaza on Calle
Centenario. Its eighteen inch adobe walls surround the indoor
seating area – and the outdoor patio in the middle courtyard is a
place to see and be seen. I opted for pizza with anchovies and
Carmel had penne with a meat sauce. The cuisine lives up to its
reputation. The ambience is quiet and dignified and the service is
peerless. Reservations at (612) 14-503-40.
Carmel and I took a walk through the streets of
Todos Santos, gawking at views and talking with some of the
Mexican and norteamericano residents of the village. The
in-town scenery suggests an archetype of domesticity, laid back
living and good times. We had a nice chat with Michael Cope, who,
with his wife, Pat, own the Galeria de Todos Santos. Michael
showed us some of his huge portraits themed in white, as well as
the paintings of other town residents, and he talked about some of
his experiences living in Todos Santos for the past eight years.
Email Michael at
[email protected],
or phone at (612) 14-505-00. We took a tour of the Todos Santos
Inn, just up the street from Michael’s gallery. Craig Sinel and
his partner, John Stoltzfus, have transformed the former hacienda
of a sugar baron into a sensitively-restored village inn. Their
care with detail in exquisite rooms, in the pool and patio area in
the courtyard, and in the wine bar has created an oasis for the
traveler who appreciates quiet luxury.
I met a young Mexican man, Ricardo,
who has recently married and built a shop on Calle Juarez. He was
studying his English lesson when I came across him. He told me all
about moving from the mainland, meeting up with family members in
Todos Santos, and talked about his aspirations for the future. I
liked him so much – his gentility, his integrity – that I bought a
blanket from him, even though we must have ten of these things at
home.
On the plaza at Calle Legaspi #3 is the Hotel Todos
Santos, home to a small hotel, a gallery and the Restaurante
Santanas. All of this has been created by Brad Baer, who has lived
in Todos Santos for the past three years (he moved up from Cabo
San Lucas). Brad is related to Max Baer (the boxer, and also to
the actor from the Beverly Hillbillies). Brad is starting a
nonprofit corporation to promote the town, and he also wants to
start bringing music festivals to Todos Santos. The hotel rooms
are on the plaza with a view of the Iglesia del Pilar, the huge
church on the plaza. The rooms are light and breezy and furnished
with colonial pieces. The hotel retains the old adobe walls of a
sugar mill owner’s hacienda and its vaulted ceilings with black
palm beams. Prices are excellent, starting at $55 in the off
season and at $65 during the November - May high season. Contact
Brad at
[email protected]
or visit the website at
www.hoteltodossantos.com,
telephone (612) 14-500-09.
We had been told not to drive in Baja after dark.
It’s just too dangerous. We made a point to leave Todos Santos
well before dark. Carmel, however, did see a little shrine to St.
Jude by the side of the highway on the drive up and wanted to stop
there on the drive back to San Lucas. This was a magical little
place, hot from the hundreds of candles lit within the small
shrine – and she spent some prayer time in there while I explored
the trail through the brush out back. Back driving again, it was
getting dark – and darker. Screeeeecchhhh....there was a cow
ambling lazily across the road, in the dark, and I didn’t see it
until we were almost right on top of it. We veered a bit to the
right in the car, off the road, and we missed the cow. Carmel said
that we were being watched over by St. Jude. And after our
blissful day in Todos Santos, I wasn’t inclined to
disagree.