We spent the first half of March back at Loreto Bay, after a five-year absence. The carefree tourist experience was quite enjoyable! This may be due in part to the fact that our friends Leif and Susan had kept one of our old kayaks for us, gave us mountain bikes to keep for the whole time we were there, kept us company, and drove us to inaccessible places for hiking.
I was reminded, flying in, how vast and rugged are the mountains of Baja California. Visitors have been doing more and more exploring recently, mostly finding routes that the locals and their livestock have been using for decades. Some of us had hiked up the slot canyon near Ligüi years before, but this time we took the trail along the parallel ridge instead:
- We chose a drier route this time.
- The lower canyon seen from above.
- Here the bed widens in bare rock . . .
- . . . before diving back into the cliffs.
On another day we drove up the arroyo San Telmo, thinking to hike a trail there that we hadn’t seen before, but we were driven back by the wind. It had been quiet for the first part of our stay, and allowed us to kayak on most mornings; but when the Loreto wind gets serious, it can stop most of us creatures in our tracks. I did manage to bring back from that trip a picture of a handsome fig tree, seen at right. A human (me) is included for scale.
Another activity normally available despite the wind is dining. Two of our favorite restaurants in the whole world are on the coast north or south of town. How heartwarming to have a waiter remember your preferences, or an owner remark on just how long you’ve been away! (I suspect that Alejandro may have been coached.)
It’s not clear that Loreto Bay has been perfected yet, but it has certainly matured a great deal. There’s shade now here and there, a separate library close to the community center, more owners than construction workers about on the streets. Some of the units in the Posadas are occupied. The supermercado El Portón, which once seemed like a lifeline and a stepping stone to the backcountry, has closed; but two little stores persist within the development, one of them owned by Pedro Lopez, the local restaurateur and delicatessen owner. The cook at the restaurant there turns out to be Rose, the lady who used to help take care of our garden.
Transportation is another aspect that’s changed a lot. The trans-peninsular highway has been widened from the town to the bridge at El Tular, just short of Nopoló. Gone is the rancho through whose gate we used to access the foothills; but on the other hand, I have met the guy who is building the big storage units in its place now. Parking at Loreto Bay has again become a problem, and has been given a new solution with angled spaces on the west side of the Paseo. The new trend in bicycle travel is fat-tired beach bikes — you still get plenty of exercise, but more time can be spent in pedaling and less in pushing.
The original Loreto Bay concept envisioned most owners renting out their homes when away, through the developer itself; but a change in structure resulted in something of a free-for-all. We rented a house with a floorplan essentially like our old one, but a block closer to the water — in fact, it’s the one where our friends John and Ruth used to stay when they came down. I liked the traditional configuration, with the extra patio at the bedroom end — it seemed a lot more private than our old place with its big side yard. Check-in didn’t go smoothly — it’s a good thing we had friends nearby and already knew our way around. One of the security guards is a fellow we used to chat with when we walked in the evening taking our census of the gecko population.
The town of Loreto itself is reassuringly familiar. Once-endless work on the Malecon is finally finished. I was glad to see the guy who cleans windshields in the parking lot at El Pescador — his existence seemed precarious when I first met him a dozen years ago. The frutería that we once considered essential is long closed. On one of our last nights we dined at the relatively new “Mi Loreto.” It needed pointing out to me that this was the old juice bar El Cañaveral, once a favorite cycling destination, and where we used to buy our lemons, but now with more walls — for protection from the wind.
Here are a few more snapshots. For the dolphin pictures, you’ll need to visit our other blog.
- Citrus doorstop.
- Our old house.
- Old courtyard
- Guest geckos
- Night on stucco.
By the way, one of the very first things I saw when we got to Loreto Bay was my old bicycle, parked by the security office. It has a kick-stand now! What an amazing link to our days under the desert sun.