Finding peace on Mexico's Baja peninsula
http://www.vancourier.com/issues04/091204/travel.html
By John Mitchell
"There is much tranquillity here," said the guard in La Paz's Regional Museum of Anthropology and History when I remarked how much I liked his home
town.
After visiting the tourist resort of Cabo San Lucas with its thumping bars and nonstop party atmosphere, I was happy to have arrived in La Paz, whose
name means "Peace." This easygoing port city on the Sea of Cortez is capital of the state of Baja California Sur, which encompasses the southern half
of Mexico's 1000-kilometre-long Baja Peninsula.
Browsing through the museum's exhibits, I began to get a sense of La Paz's surprisingly complex history. There were glass cases filled with spears and
stone tools left behind by nomadic tribes that once inhabited the region, plus displays of rusty swords and muskets evoking images of battles between
Spanish conquistadors and marauding pirates. On one wall hung a framed document bearing the name of American filibuster William Walker, who attacked
La Paz in 1853 and proclaimed himself "President of the Republic of Sonora" before fleeing from approaching Mexican troops.
There was also an old diving suit surrounded by oxygen lines and other underwater paraphernalia, a reminder that La Paz was once one of the world's
great pearling centres. The Spanish arrived in La Paz Bay during the early 16th century and gathered pearls there until 1697 when Jesuit missionaries
arrived and forbade the activity. The pearl industry came to life again during the 1800s after Mexico gained independence from Spain. Intensive
harvesting continued until the beginning of World War II, when a mysterious disease destroyed La Paz's oyster beds.
In his 1941 book The Log from the Sea of Cortez, American writer John Steinbeck described La Paz as "a lovely place" with "square, iron-shuttered
colonial houses _ with rows of beautiful trees in front of them." Today, a hodgepodge of nondescript modern buildings has replaced most of La Paz's
colonial architecture, but the city's downtown core retains much of its old-fashioned ambience.
A twin-towered 19th-century cathedral presides over La Paz's pretty main square, which is shaded by laurel trees and graced by a red bandstand and
lampposts adorned with iron sea horses. With its austere, neoclassical fa?ade constructed of brown brick and cut stone, La Paz's cathedral resembles
mission churches established by Jesuit priests throughout the Baja Peninsula. The present cathedral was built to replace La Paz's original mission
church built in 1720.
On the opposite side of the plaza stands La Paz's Government Palace, which dates back to the 1880s. This block-long building, also neoclassical in
style with an attractive clock tower, now houses a cultural centre, some government offices, plus a small research library called the Biblioteca de la
Historia de las Californias. I asked to see the library and was taken to a bare, musty room with study carrels and a tall cabinet jammed with
well-thumbed Spanish and English-language books on the Baja Peninsula's history and geography.
From the main plaza, I made my way down steep sidewalks to La Paz's main shopping district, a jigsaw puzzle of streets and pedestrian malls lined with
stores chock-full of clothing, electronic goods, Mexican handicrafts, and knick-knacks from China. The pearl trade lured people from Asia, Europe, and
the Middle East, a fact I saw mirrored in the facial features of shopkeepers and passersby.
I then set out for the Gray Whale Museum located on the southern edge of town. Every winter, gray whales make a 7,800-kilometre journey from Siberian
and Alaskan waters to their calving grounds along the Pacific shores of the Baja Peninsula. Once an endangered species with only several hundred
survivors, gray whales have made an amazing recovery since being protected from commercial whaling in 1946, and they now number over 25,000. Inside
the museum I found displays providing information about gray whales, but what really caught my attention was a complete skeleton of one of these huge
mammals, which can grow up to 15 metres long.
Eventually I reached the Malec?n, La Paz's elegant seaside promenade decorated with sculptures-including a giant Dove of Peace-that stretches the
entire length of downtown. Tired and hungry, I decided to eat a late lunch at La Terraza, a breezy, open-air restaurant popular with both locals and
tourists. I ordered a cold limonada (lemonade) and avocado stuffed with fresh shrimp, then leaned back to enjoy the view of sparkling La Paz Bay
framed by swaying palm trees.
Later that evening, I bought an ice-cream cone and joined strollers on the Malecon. As daylight faded, the setting sun turned La Paz Bay into a
cauldron of molten gold and the sky into a serene canvas of pink and purple hues. I sat on a bench and watched nature's show, glad to be in this
sympathetic city that obviously takes so much pride in living up to its name.
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