Unabashed Tourists in Todo Santos
By: Camille Cusumano
Tags: Mexic, Travel, Adventure Travel, Culture, Baja

Unabashed Tourists in Todo Santos

We so wanted the Hotel California to be the Eagles song’s inspiration. We didn’t check in, no less be unable to check out. We did check it out and must report that the hotel predates the Eagles song by decades.

Welcome to the Hotel California. All photos: Library Camille Cusumano

The good/bad news about the relatively quiet Todos Santos in Baja California is that it is at least an hour’s drive from the Cabo San Lucas airport, $150+ taxi ride. But that distance tends to keep the village not overly infested with us tourists, unlike Cabo.

What brought me there was a chance to visit with an old friend, Freda, who lives and teaches in Monterrey, Mexico. April, the week after Easter, was her spring break. We had met long ago in our starry-eyed youth when assigned to an Africa study group at work. We were going to change the world, and I believe that Freda, with years of overseas work, has done so. I’m not sorry to report that this week together, south of the border, we lazed or did a whole lot of nada and enjoyed it muchissimo.

In 1950, a Chinese immigrant, Mr. Wong, opened the Hotel California, which we passed daily on Calle Benito Juarez. For reasons we can imagine today, he changed his name to Don Antonio Tabasco, wanting locals to believe he was Mexican. He became known as El Chino anyway. He lived in the hotel with his wife and seven daughters. The song may not be about his establishment but probably helps publicity. The hotel, with its curvaceous arcade had a welcoming feminine feel and one evening we enjoyed a seafood dinner there with a crisp Chilean chardonnay.

Freda had reserved a lovely casita, Casa Frida, on the edge of town. After a stop in Cabo to see a man about a dance, I had hopped into a big yellow taxi which deposited me at the gate. Four ferociously barking dogs greeted me. Casa owner Claude let me in and calmed his pets who never stopped growling and snarling at us the whole week—no matter how many pets we indulged them. Yes, this is Mexico, land of the free-roaming, occasionally mad, dogs. Sharp canines aside, the lovely stucco cottage with thatched roof and poolside garden with organic vegetables was a welcome retreat from city life.

Casa Frida

Although we both value cultural travel above all, Freda and I were shameless tourists the entire week. Todos Santos sits just inland from the rugged coast, a stretch of Pacific that is lined with broad white-sand beaches. Most are not swimmable due to rough tides and currents. As I swim daily at home in San Francisco Bay, hiking was preferable anyway. Besides its many beaches, the slim Baja peninsula embodies forest and desert, the latter being the prime habitat encircling Todos Santos. Each day we ventured out through the maritime cactus fields, hiking anywhere from an easy 2 miles to nearby Cachora or a 10-mile roundtrip to Punta Lobos beach.

South out of town we followed this trail to Punta Lobos.

A clutch of fisherman sat around the shrine, passed on our way to Punta Lobos.

At the beach we loved how the fishermen cleaning their fresh catch drew pelicans to them like filings to a magnet. The birds waited with bated breath for the discarded fish parts. Fun to watch them scramble, feathers flying, wings flapping all for a taste.