CRUISES: Loreto: Small Town Mexico

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

Tourist places that have been in style for years tend to be, er, touristy. They suffer for their popularity. The tourist loses. If the traveler is looking for something simple, Latino, Old World like a Mexican or Italian village that could be the location for a Spaghetti Western, he won’t find it on the Miami Beach-like Mexican Riviera. But if he sneaks a little bit to the North and slips into that gulf created by the San Andreas fault, the Sea of Cortez, and drifts up its west coast he will come to a town of about 12,000 souls under the base of the stark, jagged Sierra de la Giganta mountains. Loreto looks the way Cabo did 50 years ago.

This is small town Mexico and it’s perfect. It has everything you’d want to feel you are in a Sergio Leone movie: Lethargic pelicans perch indolently on peeling fishing boats, occasional puffs of dust blow across the village square, there’s music there, dancing! A mission, the first of all the California missions, the Misión Nuestra Señora De Loreto, built in 1697 and rebuilt in 1752 still with the original mission bells and, opposite, a bust of the original missionary, Juan Maria de Salvatierra. Juan Maria was the one who drew up the plan to conquer the natives of Baja California by “spiritual means” because the military campaigns had consistently failed.

Next door to the mission lies an interesting little museum whose exhibits include Spanish campaign weapons, a Mass Book from the 18^th Century and some of the pots and pans the priests brought into service so says Nick Inman, a writer, “in their attempts to influence the Indians by way of their stomachs.” Although Loreto is the site of the oldest human settlement on the Baja peninsula the Indians, says our guide, were wiped out within a century. The town was the capital of the Californias at a time when they stretched all the way from the tip of Baja to the Oregon border. Loreto’s importance lasted until the town was devastated by a hurricane in 1829 and La Paz took over as capital. It is now a famous center for sports fishing. The Mexican government tried to develop Loreto into another super-resort in the early 1980s the way it had developed Cancun ten years before. So far fortunately it has failed.

This is still a delightfully laid back small town whose little Plaza Civica is reached with an easy walk from the harbor along the Playa past a home with life-size metal mariachi musicians standing guard outside the front door of a cool casa and, at the tall rusting signpost, a turn down the street named, not surprisingly, Salvatierra. The street passes a local Huichol Indian artist, Mariano, who is completing a decorative work of beading. The Huichols of the Sierra Madre mountains of Central Mexico have created beaded art for centuries as offerings to the gods. They create the items, some of museum quality, by spreading beeswax over the surface and then pressing in the beads, one at a time.

The Plaza like the square in any Mexican town is the center of any activity. Streets run beyond it as small shopping centers. But just before the Plaza stands something every Mexican town really needs to complete an American visitor’s vacation: a first class interesting hotel. Loreto has its Posada de las Flores, a 15-room/suite home formerly a Mexican colonial home. It has a restaurant, satellite TV and air conditioning and is furnished with Mexican antiques but it’s most fascinating characteristic is it has a swimming pool on its roof situated in the lobby’s ceiling. The hotel is part off Baja Tours & Resorts owned by an Italian hotelier Giuseppe Marcelletti who has lived in Baja for 15 years. The company owns similar hotels in La Paz and Punta Chivato and rates are posted on the websites.

After a pleasant day of exploration we wander back to the harbor. We don’t need a hotel this time. We came in a floating one, the Azamara Journey and though the Posada of the Flowers offers “teatime” we’re heading back to the ship and the Lookingglass Lounge on Deck 10 for our own afternoon tea while listening to harpist Jacqueline Dolan seduce us with her melodies as much as restaurant manager Scott Daniels does with his scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream.