My first impressions of the coastal area were gained from Jack Smith’s wonderful columns in the Los Angeles Times, later captured in his best selling book God and Mr. Gomez. Jack and his wife Denny built a home on the bluff above the Pacific Ocean at La Bocana, near the fishing village of Puerto Santa Tomas, down the coast from Ensenada. Mr. Gomez was the major domo of the area, and proprietor of the small local store. The book came out in 1974. Jack died in January, 1996 at the age of 79.
He probably wouldn’t recognize the coastal trip to Santa Tomas these days. I don’t know how much American tourist and real estate business his book brought to the area, but the growth has been spectacular. However, his former dream home is apparently still isolated at the end of the dirt road, according to travel writers Sandy and Dale Ploung, who sought it out in recent years.
It took us only five minutes to slip across the border at Tijuana, which among other things may be the graffiti capital of the world. Rosarito Beach, our first stop for lunch, has filled up with development, condos, vacation homes and U.S. retirees. The “grand old” Rosarito Beach Hotel, destination of the Hollywood crowd in the twenties and thirties, is being dwarfed by a multi-storied condo construction next door.
Heading south on the divided four-lane toll road, our tour group, which included seven from Chino, saw new subdivisions of pink houses, a visual contrast with the burnt orange favored for some other buildings. Luxury homes clung to the hillsides above.
Shacks and small plots of corn still recall the old days before the crowds moved in. As in much of Mexico, there’s no such thing as “code enforcement.”
Costco and Home Depot have been part of the past year’s “development.” A major attraction in the area is the Fox Studio, where parts of “Titanic” and other recent movies have been filmed. Before settling for the next two nights in Ensenada we visited La Bufadora, a famed blow hole geyser to the south. The place was mobbed with tourists, who now endure a quarter-mile gauntlet through rows of shops to get to the “buffalo snort,” as our guide called it—a marine version of Old Faithful.
Ensenada has grown from a sleepy seaside fishing town to a booming tourist metropolis. Once the government and property owners figured out how to get water to the usually dry coastal area, there was no stopping the rush to take advantage of the ocean view and the seaside attractions.
There’s no way to describe, after a two-day visit, Baja’s third largest city, population 260,000 as of 2005. Our stay was focused on Av. Lopez Mateo, which is anchored on one end by the 12-story Hotel Villa Marina and the other end by a modest “casino” of slot machines. In between we found stores for everything from trinkets and souvenirs to expensive leather, fashions and pieces of art. The newly reconstructed two-lane avenue had wide brick sidewalks full of hawkers, beggers, hair braiders and little kids selling gum, interspersed by restaurants, pharmacies and hyped places like Hussong’s Cantina, reputedly an old stagecoach stop in 1892.
It’s one of those “must see” watering holes like the Red Onion Saloon in Skagway, Alaska. I’ll hand it to them—the street was clean and there were plenty of trash cans.
At our margarita reception on the top floor of our pink hotel, higher by about eight stories than any other building in the city, we had a sweeping view of the coast’s only deep water port. On the sea side are docks for cruise ships and a famous open-air fish market, from which came the delicious tuna steak I enjoyed for dinner at one of the covered outdoor cafes along Lopez Mateo.
The prettiest building I saw was the Riviera del Pacifico, once a plush casino just south of the hotel, now government offices, museum and cultural center in a lovely park setting. If we’d had another day I would have enjoyed a tour of the city’s other cultural and historical delights.
While others in our group loaded up on all kinds of purchases, mine were modest—a container of Mexican jumping beans, a Pinocchio marionette for my grandson and some colorful beads for my wife.
Coming home we bypassed the main U.S. entry at San Ysidro, going east to Otay Mesa where it took only two hours to get back into the good old U.S.A., including the detour time. All our luggage had to be unloaded and carried across by hand. The crossing would have been quicker except it took the bus an hour to get through its security line without us. Our contribution to secure borders.
(Copyright 2007 Champion Newspapers - published August 11, 2007)
