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 Travel & Outdoors | March 2008 
Living Like a Local in Todos Santos
 Jeremy Ferguson - The Toronta Star
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| Howlie the white cockatoo with restaurateur Don, one of American expats who run the Cafe Dlicia. (Jeremy Ferguson/The Star)
The Las Palmas Casitas has three casitas, plus a small upstairs apartment, for rent. See boomersabroad.com or contact laspalmascasitas(at)yahoo.com
Restaurants: Caf้ D'licia, tel 145-0862; Fonda El Zaguan, tel. 131-6769; Ristorante Tre Galline, tel 145-0274.
For tourist information: www.visitMexico.com | | |
Todos Santos, Mexico "One thing I should warn you about," says Janel Beeman, "is the scorpions. But it's not so bad. I've only seen five in 10 years."
Beeman is showing guests around their new digs. Foreigners come from as far off as Australia, New Zealand and Italy to rent her three casitas, thatched-roof cottages on the Baja California peninsula. They offer the opportunity to escape the jangling mainstream and live like a local in an exotic destination.
Two years ago, Todos Santos was named a "Pueblo Magico" one of an elite group of villages, including San Miguel de Allende and San Cristobel de las Casas, designated "Magical Towns" by Mexico's Ministry of Tourism.
And there is a magic to this town. It just isn't obvious to tourists driving up from Cabo San Lucas who may think they've wandered into a dust-infused movie set from Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
A casita makes a fine base for discovery. At Beeman's Palmas Casitas, home is a cottage handsomely painted in desert hues, immaculately clean, comfortable and outfitted with all the necessities, right down to blender, coffee-maker and corkscrew. The rangy, silver-haired Californian understands the bottom line.
A library of books in each casita reflects Beeman's penchant for the spiritual and mystical. Guests curl up with books on covered terraces or in the garden, an oasis of palm, mango and banana trees, bougainvillea and hibiscus, with a fountain setting the rhythm for a laid-back stay.
The neighbours' roosters provide wake-up calls. If you don't much like roosters, Beeman gives you ear plugs.
Guests soon learn Todos Santos' greatest asset is the tumultuous Pacific and ribbon of broad, sandy beaches a 10-minute drive from town. Undercurrents are treacherous and only a few beaches suitable for swimming, but it doesn't matter: Being in such a place is enough.
At the beach of Punta Lobos, the fishing fleet struggles to make it to shore every afternoon. An audience of 100 or so pelicans assembles, long beaks clicking, clacking and interlocking as they vie for choice bits when fishermen gut and clean their catch. Deals are easily made and guests return to their casitas with fresh fish for dinner.
December through March are the most exciting months to be here because it's whale season. Grey whales arrive by the thousand the greatest whale migration on the planet from their northern home in Alaska to mate and give birth in Baja's lagoons. These greys are up to 18 metres long, and as buoyant as butterflies.
Sighting whales is often arduous in a tossing boat, but not so here: All you have to do is stand on the beach and the whales come to you. A pod of 20 or more whales cavorts immediately off shore, a choreography of whale tails, torsos, heads and spouting blow holes.
"Look," says one of all of a dozen observers, "the beach drops off quickly. The whales are using the edge of the drop to scale the barnacles off their hides. They're using it as a loofah. They're exfoliating. It's a spa for whales."
Nor is the town itself as ordinary as it seems. Founded in 1723 by Jesuits, it has some history and feels it. Located on the Tropic of Cancer, it boasts a near-perfect climate. In Baja's blast of summer heat, it's 12C degrees cooler than Cabo San Lucas.
Moreover, it has culture, artists' studios, galleries, craftshops, restaurants and bars dramatically disproportionate to its modest population of 6,000.
Casita dwellers planning to cook at home may be put off by the depressing state of local supermarkets. Then they're rescued by the organics lady who shows up five days weekly with armloads of splendid greens. And again by Friday's fish lady, who works out of a pickup and offers jumbo shrimps, scallops, blue crabs, tuna and sea bass hauled in that very morning.
Local supermercados stock liquors including tequila and rum, beer and wine. Inexpensive and pleasant Mexican wines from vineyards in northern Baja California, are best found, oddly, in farmacias.
Of the town's dozen or so very good restaurants, check out Tre Galline, the "Three Chickens." Restaurateur Angelo Dal Bon divides his year between Todos Santos and his family's trattoria on Italy's Lake Garda.
What is a traditionalist Italian chef doing in this remote corner of Mexico? "This is a place far from a false consumer society," he says. "Life here comes in two speeds low and lowest. My mission is to bring real Italian flavours to the town not Italian cooking by people who've never been to Italy."
When Dal Bon, family members or friends make the 26-hour journey from Italy, their suitcases are packed with olive oils, balsamic vinegars, anchovies and sublimely stinky cheeses. His authentic ingredients and perfectionism translate to the plate as fluffy, deep-fried zucchini blossoms, sweet potato raviolis on savoury Parmesan crisp and house-made noodles tossed in virgin olive oil with fat shrimps and black olives.
For a real-thing Mexican breakfast, the place is Caf้ D'licia, an al fresco resto run by genial American expats whose menagerie of parrots includes a screeching white cockatoo. The dish to order is chile relleno.
And foreigners will find maybe the best margarita in all Mexico at the Fonda el Zaguan a couple of doors down from Tre Galline. A couple of these and you won't care if you encounter a scorpion. You'll be dancing with it.
Jeremy Ferguson is a freelance writer based in Victoria, B.C. |
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