Driving to Todos Santos

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Wednesday was an overcast, rainy, cool day so we just hung around the resort waiting for the sun to come out, which it never did. So Thurday we rented a jeep and decided to drive to the town of Todos Santos on the Pacifica side of the Baja Peninsula. We couldn't get the jeep until 10:30 so my big plans of making an all day tour to Todos Santos, La Paz and San Jose de Cabo were not fulfilled. Although it was still somewhat overcast, we spent a half hour wrestling the top down on the jeep. Of course the girl who worked for Thrifty had no idea how to get it down.

So we decided to drive up to Todos Santos, see the sites there and return. It's a drive of about 75km or 50 miles up the Pacific Coast. Unfortunately, the road does not get real close to the ocean and for 50 miles, there were no turnoffs for scenic overviews or anything like that. If this were in the states, I believe they would have had several places to stop on a cliff to see the Pacific. So we got to see a lot of cactus and mountains off the to the east. Todos Santos is a kind of sleepy little town known for a lot of local artists, and most famously for the Hotel California. This is the hotel that inspired the famous Eagles song of the same name. It also has a mission that was founded by the Spanish in 1753.

Jan got to do some shopping and enjoyed the shops there. One of the big jewelry things here is the fire opal, which they mine right in this area. After some shopping it was cerveza time so we went to the Hotel California and sat in the garden bar. I wanted to see the mission so we walked around till we found it. As I was reading the placque at the mission, I was disappointed to find out that none of the original mission remains. Instead, they built a replica in the 1970's.

So we started back for Cabo San Lucas as the sun was setting and since it was getting pretty cool, we stopped along the highway and spent another half hour wrestling the top back up on the jeep. We got it pretty close to right, but the side window was flapping in the wind. Good enough for Mexico.

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Photos

Hotel California
The hotel that inspired the Eagles song.

Hotel California Cafe
Cerveza time.

Todos Santos Mission
A bit of a disappointment.