Mexico 1 leaves the coast of the Mar de Cortés just south of Loreto and cuts back into the interior of the peninsula before veering east again and doubling back to the great sea at the Bahía de La Paz. The city of La Paz, nestled in the wide curve of the bay, was our main destination on this trip and Harry recorded the attitudes of the passengers at the moment we arrived there.
Here's John Steinbeck on La Paz, as it was back in the 1940s:
La Paz grew in fascination as we approached. The square, iron-shuttered colonial houses stood up right in back of the beach with rows of beautiful trees in front of them. It is a lovely place. There is a broad promenade along the water lined with benches, named for dead residents of the city, where one may rest oneself . . . [A] cloud of delight hangs over the distant city from the time when it was the great pearl center of the world . . . Guyamas is busier, they say, and Mazatlán gayer, but La Paz is antigua.
We didn't approach La Paz from the water, as Steinbeck did, and it has changed plenty since his time, but a cloud of delight still hangs over it, purely Mexican, not fueled by American tourist dollars, and it it still antigua, old and wise. It's a tourist town, but it caters to Mexican tourists, and so is graceful and slow in its rhythms, without the frenzied party-til-you-puke atmosphere of Cabo San Lucas or the Pacific coast above Ensenada.
There is nothing spectacular about the place, its allure is quiet . . . but powerful. After a day there I never wanted to leave, and I wish I was there right now.
I thought it would be good to stay for at least a night or two at the Hotel Perla, the first "destination hotel" in La Paz, built in the 1940s, which for a short time, into the 50s, was host to Hollywood and literary celebrities, a kind of proto Cabo San Lucas -- but the Perla was full, which led us happily to the second destination hotel built in La Paz, not long after the Perla, the Los Arcos. The rooms in the main building were too pricey for us, but we got fine rooms in a more recent extension of the hotel across the street, the Cabañas de Los Arcos.
The main hotel was full of American fishermen, the cabañas were full of Mexican families and so pleasant that, after a couple of days spent searching for even cheaper accommodations, we sent my sister Lee forth to negotiate a lower rate for an extended stay at the Los Arcos. This she accomplished, and when we checked out we discovered that they had applied the rate retroactively to our first days there as well.
This rate was cheaper than you'd expect to find at a Holiday Inn next to an ugly Interstate off-ramp in the United States, though the big rooms had views of the Mar de Cortés, the service was superb and the hotel was located on the malecón, the broad promenade along the water that Steinbeck mentions and that is the heart of La Paz's daily public life, especially after dark.
I felt I had come home.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]