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Todos Santos: an artists' colony surrounded by desert but only a couple of miles from the Pacific
http://www.oregonlive.com/travel/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/t...
January 22, 2006
TERRY RICHARD
Weaving his way through a thorn forest of jumping chollas, cardon cactus and elephant trees, Sergio Jauregui paused when he reached a cliff-top view
of the Pacific Ocean.
A group of humpback whales spouted and slapped the water with their tails as they swam south along the Baja California coast. The barks of sea lions
echoed off the nearby cliffs, a rare place where lichens and moss can grow on cactus because of coastal fog.
The stark January landscape was a dull brown, though it can be green as a rain forest when the wet season ends in October. The only sign of human
habitation, other than colorful pangas used by fishermen on the Pacific, was a collection of deserted buildings.
"Somebody thought it would be a good place to build a fish cannery in the '30s," said Jauregui, owner of Todos Santos Eco Adventures guide service.
"He died before it was completed, so it became a ghost town. You see the same thing all over Baja."
After three-quarters of a century, another plan to develop this land just south of the small town of Todos Santos is emerging. Rather than harvesting
a natural resource, developers want to capitalize on the beauty of the setting by building a gated community of million-dollar homes.
Things don't always happen as planned in Mexico -- and timetables are anyone's guess -- but the quaint village that was discovered two decades ago by
a cadre of American artists is poised for big changes.
Go without expectations
I didn't know a thing about Todos Santos when someone suggested I add a few days to visit the small Baja town during a vacation to the southern tip of
Mexico's magnificent peninsula.
Todos Santos is most embraced, I was told, by those who come without expectations of what they will find there.
An hour's drive north of the vacation resort of Cabo San Lucas, Todos Santos is a budding arts community, not unlike Taos, N.M., of the 1960s.
I don't know what Taos looked like back then, but it must have looked better than my first impression of Todos Santos as I drove into town from La
Paz, the capital and main port for the state of Baja South.
Trash blowing in the wind . . . cars parked in the streets with flat tires, a sure sign they hadn't moved in months . . . potholes large enough to
swallow the front suspension of my rental car . . . mangy dogs prowling dusty alleyways looking for scraps of food.
After five minutes in town, I was ready to head back to the fleshy temptations of Cabo San Lucas, the top international destination from Portland
International Airport.
But I had a room reserved at Todos Santos Inn, so I decided to stick it out and see whether I could discover the magic of the place.
That proved to be a smart move.
Instead of leaving Mexico only with memories of a week in the sun, three extra days in Todos Santos helped me discover the lifestyle that makes Baja
one of the world's most alluring places for people who love deserts or oceans -- which covers just about everyone.
An oasis for ex-pat artists
Todos Santos (Spanish for "all saints") is surrounded by the magnificent Baja desert, without being part of it. The 7,000-foot-high Sierra de la
Laguna mountains to the east guarantee a bountiful supply of fresh water by trapping rain clouds off the Pacific. An underground torrent heads
straight for Todos Santos, a fact that helped its settlement in 1724 as a place to raise sugar cane in the desert.
The land around town is still a lush oasis, with a green canopy of California fan palms and eucalyptus trees. The bountiful fresh water helps support
year-round crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, chiles, limes, mangoes, papayas and more.
The comparatively cool Pacific lies a couple miles to the west -- close enough to give the town of 4,000 a comfortable microclimate, but wild enough
to keep the sprawling development of nearby Cabo San Lucas at bay.
At least for a few more years.
The mix of desert sand and ocean dunes . . . fiery red sunsets over the Pacific . . . ominous storm clouds over the mountains . . . friendly natives
and a stream of northerners escaping winter combine to make Todos Santos a haven for artists.
More than a dozen fine art galleries have sprung up around town since Charles Stewart blazed the trail by relocating from Taos in 1984. He still holds
court in his gallery, which also is his home, where he tells tales from the autobiography he is writing while visitors browse art on the walls of his
rooms.
Most of the town's galleries are concentrated near Santa Rosa Mission Church on the plaza, or on Juarez Street near one of the most famous buildings
in Baja (at least among aging American baby boomers) -- the Hotel California.
The new Hotel California
"Welcome to the Hotel California . . . You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave" -- The Eagles.
Don Henley and Glenn Frey hadn't seen the hotel, or even visited Todos Santos, when they wrote the 1975 tune. Somehow, though, the words from "Hotel
California," one of the most popular rock songs in history with album sales of 16 million, capture the essence of the town.
When I left Mexico after 11 days in Baja, Los Cabos became an immediate blur in my memory. But my time in Todos Santos will always rattle around in my
brain as the antithesis of the assembly-line tourism of the Mexican beach resorts.
Walk down a street in Todos Santos, and you see incredible poverty and the filth that accompanies it. A few steps away, you enter a doorway where
inside you discover a magnificent restaurant, an elegant boutique hotel or a gallery where wealthy Americans write $5,000 checks for paintings to cart
back to their second homes at Los Cabos.
The Hotel California itself is decorated by many such pieces of art. After falling into a boarded-up dump of disrepair, the hotel has been restored by
new owners John and Debbie Stewart from Galiano Island, B.C. Its 11 refurbished rooms again share space with a courtyard garden, a patio restaurant,
exotic plants, a tequila bar and a fine arts gift shop. The couples' 1964 Imperial convertible, with black body, white top and B.C. plates, is often
parked out front.
Much of the hotel's art comes from the most prolific artist in town, Gabriel Rodriguez, who signs his work as Gabo.
Love it or hate it, Gabo's work draws a reaction. The Hotel California displays Gabo's steel sculpture of a bull over its bar, a 10-foot abstract
painting in its tequila bar and a room filled by his tribute to Jackson Pollock.
Gabo was off in San Diego to buy painting supplies when I visited, so his wife, Christina, showed me around his gallery and studio. She explained how
"Rojo Gabo Rojo," a series of red paintings that have become his trademark, came from inspiration during a visit to Oregon in August 2003. (His work
also is displayed and sold at Freed Gallery in Lincoln City.)
Many of Gabo's paintings are garish and thought-provoking, similar to those of Marc Chagall. In a town where the Baja landscape is the most frequent
topic for artists, bizarre images from a fertile mind are not always looked upon as art. And so, when Gabo opened his new Galeria Gabo last year,
designing the exterior to resemble a Spanish mission, critics of his work began referring to it as the "Church of Gabo."
Two other popular galleries in Todos Santos are a few doors apart, a block west of the Hotel California.
Jill Logan relocated seven years ago from Laguna Beach, Calif., to open her Galeria Logan. The courtyard where she works is as beautifully decorated
as the walls of her gallery, where her colorful landscape paintings rarely stay for long.
Nearby is Los Girasoles (Sunflower) Galeria, owned by Susan Diaz Rivera. A resident of Loreto, the oldest European settlement in all the Californias,
Diaz Rivera travels around Baja to paint landscapes on site. Copies of her "Altitudes" were presented by President Vicente Fox to 21 heads of state,
including President Bush, when Mexico hosted the Asian-Pacific summit in 2002.
Artists, surfers and stars
Conversations overheard in a Todos Santos restaurant turn up two predictable types of long-term visitors from the States: A man from Sonoma, Calif.,
was looking to buy property, because the waves he surfs on up north are too cold. A woman from Pagosa Springs, Colo., had flown south for the winter
to paint.
Both were dining at El Tamarindo, a new restaurant trying to establish itself against the chic Cafe Santa Fe where the Cabo San Lucas yacht crowd
comes to dine. Waiters named Thomas, Marco and Bernard scurry among El Tamarindo's tables, providing excellent service and conversation in
eager-to-learn English. Male patrons shake the waiters' hands in thanks as they depart, while female diners hunt them down to bestow hugs.
Another type of conversation among Americans elsewhere in town couldn't be overheard. Actress Sandra Bullock had recently rented the entire Posada la
Poza for a week so she and her entourage could escape prying eyes.
Roughly translated, Posada la Poza means "boutique hotel beside a freshwater lagoon at the edge of the ocean." Owners Juerg and Libusche Wiesendanger
emigrated from Switzerland -- he to run an inn and restaurant, she to paint and manage a gallery. The result is like having a Swiss mountain inn and
Zurich art studio set in the Baja desert a short walk from the Pacific.
It wasn't an image I had expected to find in Mexico. But as the sun disappeared into the Pacific, it was an image that was easy to embrace.
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Acuity
Nomad
Posts: 195
Registered: 5-26-2005
Location: Comox, BC, and Todos Santos
Member Is Offline
Mood: Craving sleep!
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His visit must have been last year. El Tamarindo is now closed. Too much hugging and shaking of hands?
And I'm charmed to see that i apparently live in the area off main street where you "Walk down a street in Todos Santos, and you see incredible
poverty and the filth that accompanies it. "
I'd better start cleaning up my yard...!
Seriously, though, it is an intersting place with a pretty unique location. We love it, dead cars, pigs, filth, magic and all!
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