Rodrigo Ortega Montes was barefoot and beaming, a hammer in one hand,
a bucket full of clams and sea snails in the other.
" Very rich," he said in Spanish, meaning the snails.
We were alone on the beach. When I introduced myself, Ortega told me how he
had left Mazatlan, worked in California for a few years, then found his way
to a construction job here. He squinted south at the blue horizon, the knife-sharpoutline
of a rocky hill with the sun behind it, and raised his arms.
" All this," he said, "and no migra."
Whether you're coming from the north or south -- with or without immigration
officials to consider -- life can be grand in this corner of Baja California.
But it is getting more complicated.
San Felipe, about 350 miles south and slightly east of Los Angeles, was founded
in 1916 or 1925 (depending on who's counting) as a fishing port. Once the paved
road to the U.S. border went through in the early 1950s, American anglers and
adventurers started coming. Now a sign puts the full-time population at 19,263,
although the 2005 census places the number at 14,831.
Even with no commercial flights, the town gets as many as 250,000 American
and Canadian visitors yearly, many of them snowbirds in RVs who park their
vehicles in dozens of campgrounds known as campos.
During spring break season -- essentially, the month of March -- the city teems
with college students eager to drink legally at age 18 and line up for foam
parties. (If you have to ask, you're too old.) The rule of thumb: Californians
come from spring through fall, and Canadians descend in winter. And every day
the sun rises over the sea and sets over the mountains.
Besides fishing, clamming, drinking and lounging, visitors roar through the
desert on off-road vehicles of all kinds. For a day trip, many make the 55-mile
paved drive to Puertecitos, a quirky American expat and retirement enclave
with natural hot springs at the sea's edge.
At night, you can stroll past the row of semi-rustic restaurants and bars along
the malecon. At any hour, you're likely to catch fishermen fussing with their
boats. On beaches at the edge of town, you see hundreds of four-posted huts
-- parking ports waiting for RVs.
For miles to the north and south, hundreds of vacation homes and condos have
gone up. Construction surged in the '90s and slowed more recently, leaving
the city poised between rapid growth and persistent rusticity.
Two unfinished projects look as though they'll surpass five stories, but otherwise,
nearly every building is three stories or less. In other words, growth in San
Felipe is so far a horizontal story, not a vertical one, and it seems to be
happening at 20 mph, not 70. Which, given the quality of so many Baja roads,
might be prudent.
Arriving by road -- yes, it's paved -- you reach San Felipe by miles of stark
borderlands driving (with a military checkpoint or two along the way). To your
right rise the serrated foothills of Baja's Sierra San Pedro Martir range,
with the usual Baja stubble of ocotillo, mesquite and scattered cardon cactus.
On the left it's all flat. And don't pull over -- there's no shoulder and you
could end up sinking into the sand.
This was once a big wetlands, the estuary of the Colorado River. Now that there's
nearly nothing left of the Colorado by the time it gets here, the old delta
has devolved into a dead zone, too salty even for cactus.
Rolling beyond that dead zone and into San Felipe, you sidle up to the Gulf
of California, a.k.a. the Sea of Cortes. You pass a dozen or more beachfront
campgrounds for RV people and owners of rustic vacation homes. The rocky slopes
of 955-foot Cerro el Machorro rise at the northern end of the town and bay,
and white sandy beaches march south into the distance.
Depending on when you look, the beach might seem a bit broad or downright eerie
-- the retreating sea can lay bare as much as a quarter-mile of damp sand.
On a low hill in the shadow of Cerro el Machorro, the Catholic faithful have
put up a blue and white shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a spot that offers
the best view in town and is visible to boats for miles around. The two rowdiest
spring-break party bars, Rockodile and the Beachcomber, stand along the malecon,
the three-block street and promenade that fronts the beach.
At the northern end of the malecon, beyond the footbridge that leads to the
Guadalupe shrine, stand the Lighthouse restaurant and a hulking ship-shaped
discotheque called the Boom Boom Room.
Look left as you cross the foot bridge and you behold the town's derelict old
shipworks, now a wet graveyard for several vessels that will never float again.
Look right for a great panorama of beach and sea, including dozens of fishing
boats, whose owners typically slouch nearby, mending nets or haunting the sidewalk
and whispering to strangers like me.
" Hey, mister. You like fishing?"
I think I heard that question five times in 48 hours. But one day soon -- and
really, how could anybody be looking forward to that day? --the real-estate
hawkers are going to outnumber the fishing pitchmen.
Meanwhile, with most of its visitors in RVs, condos or vacation homes, San
Felipe sustains a strange and perplexing batch of hotels.
Beachfront El Cortez, built in 1959, is well-kept but stopped taking credit
cards late in 2007. The Costa Azul stands in a prime spot at the end of the
malecon, but its rooms are marred by flaking paint, and the staff doesn't bother
to open the restaurant or heat the pool off-season. The Hotel San Felipe Marina
Resort & Spa, south of town, has 55 rooms within steps of the beach --
but no marina or spa.
The selection will improve with the opening of the Club Habana -- formerly
known as the Hotel Misiones, next door to the Hotel Playa Club -- but it's
unclear whether the rehabilitators will meet their target of opening later
this year.
Then again, if you're a believer in deadlines, this probably isn't the place
for you anyway. I fell in step with San Felipe when I stopped consulting my
watch and meandered from meal to beach to car to meal to beach to bed, time-traveling
between old and new.
For instance: Next to Pete's Camp el Paraiso, a campground, restaurant and
rustic vacation-home enclave that dates back more than 40 years, I found the
Caras de Mexico golf course and its neighboring condos.
For breakfast one day, I had a $5.75 eggs Benedict at Pavilion, the fancy restaurant
neighboring the golf course. For dinner one night I had grilled shrimp for
$11 on the upstairs patio of Conchita's, gazing out at the sea and guessing
whether the fake marlin that dangled from a wire above the family at the best
table posed a safety risk
.
Eventually I stopped worrying and had another beer. That, for now, is the San
Felipe way. |