Todos Santos Hotel California - made famous by the Eagles song.
Tourists who aren’t into the Cabo San Lucas scene of
catching a big fish, golf or getting drunk and hanging upside down by
their ankles on a fish scale in a bar are happy to discover the sleepy ‘Artists
Colony’ of Todos Santos just one hour north of Cabo San Lucas. What was once Santa Fe, New Mexico in
the 1920´s, later Carmel and Laguna Beach in the 50´s & 60´s, is now becoming
Todos Santos. Whatever that is … or whatever you want it to be.
To get there, rent a car, take the two-lane highway out of
Cabo San Lucas, and get prepared to enjoy one of the most spectacular scenic
drives to be found anywhere. You will cross over grand arroyos, look down on
Pacific coast beaches, off which you may see migrating whales spouting or manta
rays the size of baby grand pianos belly flopping. The road meanders up and
down hills and across coastal plains covered with thorn tropical vegetation.
In Todos Santos one can stroll paved (and dirt) colonial era
streets of a peaceful village where one will find more art galleries and fine
restaurants than cantinas or taco stands. Here you won’t have to fend off Time
Share sales people, or ‘street peddlers’ who in Cabo San Lucas, seem to leap
out at you from behind every bush and rock.
Missionaries settled Todos Santos during the colonial era,
built a church, and began crop production to supply La Paz, fifty miles to the
East. By ox-drawn wagon cart. A natural spring-fed river flows through the town
center irrigating crops, supplying homes and businesses, and then into the sea,
such is the abundance of the precious commodity here.
Todos Santos, is an oasis and micro climate, always ten to
fifteen degrees cooler than the rest of Los Cabos. In recent times, it has
become an escape for American and Canadian artists, writers and musicians
seeking creative space and tranquility as well as art lovers from the world
over seeking affordable fine art.
Over the past two centuries, the town slowly grew and even
had a bit of a flowering in the early part of the last century when sugar production
brought fortune to the town enabling it to build a regional stage theater,
baseball and aquatic stadiums and a new church the size of a small cathedral.
Imagine … all these big city amenities in a little village farm town of a few
thousand souls!
In the middle of the last century as sugar prices fell, so
did the fortune of Todos Santos. The town went to sleep (rolled over and nearly
died is more apt …) for almost fifty years. The sugar mills became ruins,
houses were abandoned and civic monuments like the theater and aquatic stadium
began to crumble.
But the locals hung on; fishing, farming, going to church
and praying. The truth, should it be told … is that mostly the women and
children go to church, while the men typically spend their time from Friday to
Monday - watching sports or standing around under a tree and
drinking beer off the back of their pickups.
Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Todos Santos
With the completion of the two-lane highway, connecting the
village with La Paz and Los Cabos, civilization was now only an hour away in
either direction. Before the highway, it was a ten to twelve hour teeth
rattling drive in an old farm truck on a frequently washed out dirt road. Five
or six days by ox cart before that.
On the weird and fantastic side - many folks in days prior to the highway,
had lived their entire lives in Todos Santos without once visiting the big
cities, a killer days drive away. Having lived without TV, radio or a
newspaper, the locals "missed" WW1, WW2, the Vietnam War, 911 the Gulf Wars and
everything in between. Whether they missed anything worth missing is debatable,
but any discussion of history with a local, is bound to be a bizarre,
one-sided exercise in futility.
One could surmise that little has appeared on the radar
screens of the locals since Cortez set foot in La Paz nearly five hundred years
ago looking for pearls and a mythical tribe of gorgeous Amazon-like warrior
women. He found pearls and plenty of trouble with the Baja natives. Early on,
in Todos Santos there were some skirmishes with the natives ending in the
deaths of some of the missionaries who opposed their polygamy and ‘clothes
optional’ way of life. The native men also objected to the conquistadors taking their women leaving them with the old, too young and other less than desirable ones. I didn't make this up. This is what the missionaries recorded.
But overall, little changed until the completion of the
Transpeninsular Highway forty years ago. Beginning in Tijuana it rolls almost
one thousand miles all the way to Los Cabos. And it was on this long, lonesome,
desert highway, that artist Charles Stewart and his Cherokee Indian wife Mary
Ann, rolled into town some twenty years ago seeking peace and refuge from the
exploding tourist art communities of Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico.
Stewart, (1922-2011) Made a name for himself painting dreamy paintings loaded
with American Indian symbology heavily influenced by the surrealist movement of
the 40’s. You can visit the Charles Stewart residence a short block
down the street behind the bank on Juarez Street. The house is an interesting
abode in "French Baja Colonial style." It’s basically a four-room box
with a hall down the middle with a covered veranda on all four sides. Stewart
hung his paintings on the exterior walls all around the house and inside on
the central hallway walls.
Artist Charles Steward (1922-2011) founder of Todos Santos art scene
Other artists, writers, musicians, masseuses, surfers,
yogis, vegans, psychologists, psychos assorted not-so-creative types but
wanting-to-be - all followed the slow southerly whale migration to Baja
and Todos Santos. But lacking the instinct (or
intelligence) of whales and returning north after a season, many stayed, seeing
Todos Santos as a drift backwards in time
to the idealistic dreams of their youth.
There are over a dozen art galleries in Todos Santos with
offerings ranging from photography, stained glass, Plein Aire landscapes,
streetscapes, seascapes, surfer paintings, cowscapes, fighting cocks and chickens crossing a dusty road. Not to mention an equal number of silver jewelry, talavera pottery and other assorted artisan shops filled with blankets, sombreros etc brought in by truck and ferry from mainland Mexico.
There’s a popular artist with the sofa art set - a faux Van
Gogh impressionist (will she ever cut off her ear?) and a
score of painters who excel at painted copies of photographs of Mexicans
standing in Chile fields leaning on a hoe or washing their laundry in a stream.
Folks come to visit, dine and buy art here. Prices being more reasonable than in Los
Angeles, New York or Santa Fe. Gabo - a former photographer from Tijuana turned artist built a cathedral to himself a block away from the one everyone prays in.
But Santa Fe is still a Mecca for art. For where once upon a time Santa Fe was a village like Todos Santos, Santa
Fe is now a town of sixty-two thousand souls with over four hundred galleries. Filled with enough faux Fauvists, Baby Boomer Impressionists and rubber tomahawk, basket and blanket galleries to choke a cowboys horse. The art mix is enhanced by satellite galleries from NYC offering abstract impressionist works by American masters starting at a mere half million dollars.
Todos (as the locals call it) is catching up. Rents in Todos Santos are increasing in direct proportion with the numbers
of bored fifty year-old ex-pat Gringos opening T-shirt, trinket, massage and
latte’ tiendas. One highly imaginative Gringo recently opened a Mexican
Restaurant. Local Mexicans say they’ve never tasted anything like it..
The locals generally dine at the taco carts or open air palapa restaurants
on regional entrees such as tacos filled with freshly caught shrimp, chopped
steak, cow’s brains (or eyes), goat, cactus and crickets. Tourists
opt for less adventuresome fare from the few but amazingly good alta Mexicana cuisine and Baja/continental dining spots.
Some establishments have been given rave reviews
by New York Times food critics further adding to the mystique of the town.
Not-to-be-missed is the Los Adobes de Todos Santos Restaurant which features
continental food with a Baja twist. The Cafe Santa Fe Restaurant is well known
for northern Italian cuisine, and the Hotel California
Restaurant offers a bit of both.
Besides lots of fine and lots of not-so-fine art, great food
and the mellow yellow of a Mexican town that time almost forgot, other reasons
for visiting Todos Santos include: great surfing at nearby Pescadero and
Cerritos beaches, horse back riding along dusty palm shaded paths, fishing from the beach or pangas or just meandering about the colonial brick
town contemplating the 'what eva' and what's-life-all-about of it all.
Don't miss the Prof. Nestor Agundez Martinez Cultural Center in the old brick school on the main drag up the hill a couple blocks from the Hotel California. There's galleries of old photos, Indian relics, and art orphaned by ex-pats who moved in, painted and moved on. Then there's the Experimental Campo
(botanical station) just south of town for the hard core gardeners. Take a gander at the Real
Estate office windows with their photos of colorful mini haciendas (with Jacuzzis) and ocean front lots at prices comparable to the 1940's in California.
Real estate shopping has been called one of America's favorite consumer sports next to garage sale picking. We all do it. Even here in laid back, semi-counter culture Pueblo Magico Todos Santos.
Years ago ocean front lots in Southern California were going
for $25,000. Now you’re lucky to find one for less than 2 million dollars.
I’m not going to tell you the prices lots are selling for down here, you’ll
have to find that out yourself. But I do know some poor artists that own more
than one. And many lots go for less than a ten year old used car. And can be
traded for one. A good used pick-up truck may even command one with an ocean
view.
The serene Hotel Posada La Poza overlooks a natural lagoon and the Pacific
People who visit Todos Santos generally come for a day in a
rented car from Cabo San Lucas (or motor coach) an hour to the South. If planning on a longer
stay, one can camp free on the beach at Cerritos, stay in a palapa or motel
room on the beach in San Pedrito or in one of several hotels ranging from the
modern Mision Pilar ($40. for two) $80 at the Hotel Todos Santos, upwards of $175 at the Hotel California or double that at the Posada La Poza
boutique hotel located on the beach west of town.
The legendary Hotel California is known throughout the world
as the hotel the Eagles Band song with the same name, made famous. It best
exemplifies the dream and mystique of Todos Santos. The band never stayed
there. But each year, thousands of tourists visit and pay their respects
wanting to believe the band slept there - in room number fourteen, according to
one Japanese guidebook. Never mind there are only eleven rooms.
People pose for
photos in front of the hotel, buy T-shirts and other souvenirs all believing
the famous song ‘Hotel California’ was written about this place - then they plead to see room number fourteen.
To clear the air on the debate, I queried the hotel owner
who assured me live and in person, in front of a witness, and looking me
straight in the eye - "The Eagles NEVER STAYED at the Hotel
California." Now, before you waste your money on that T-shirt, repeat
after me: "The Eagles never stayed at the Hotel California." But I
want to believe they did. And I believe they found Elvis and Janis Joplin there. And I
believe Jacko may have dangled his kid (or something else) out the balcony
window there as well.
So, as Bob Dylan once sang: "You’ve got to believe in
something. " I believe, " It’s getting too dark to see, " and I
can’t take it anymore," so I’ll just walk down that lonesome road and watch the sunset with my wife. Then, I’ll take
her home and paint her. And in what
better place than Todos Santos.
Todos Santos is 1 hr. from Cabo San Lucas and La Paz to the north.
Some of the more recommended Todos Santos Baja California hotels and restaurants:
Los Adobes Restaurant: Hidalgo 18, Centro, 23300 Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico
hotelcaliforniabaja.com/
The Legendary Baja California Hotel in Mexico. Hotel Rooms and Suites - located in town center. Bar, boutique, gallery, entertainment
Hotel Posada la Poza - Low key, private and Five Star off in a secluded world of its own.
http://www.hotelposadalapozatodossantos.com/
Cafe Santa Fe, Todos Santos You will be hard-pressed to find finer Italian fare in NYC or Italy
Hotel Posada la Poza - Low key, private and Five Star off in a secluded world of its own.
http://www.hotelposadalapozatodossantos.com/
Cafe Santa Fe, Todos Santos You will be hard-pressed to find finer Italian fare in NYC or Italy
Author David Mandich and his wife Dr. Rosa Pena live in Los Cabos. He writes for Los Cabos Guide,
Gringo Gazette, Los Cabo Magazine, Luxury Avenue Magazine, Discover Los Cabos and many other
publications in the US and Mexico. Originally published by Los Cabos Magazine, Los Cabos Guide 2001,
Updated 12/10/2014 by David Mandich. Copyright David Mandich, All Rights Reserved.
Updated 12/10/2014 by David Mandich. Copyright David Mandich, All Rights Reserved.
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