Johnny's Beach on Baja's Golfo de Santa Clara
" If you've ever traveled the mainland side of the Sea of Cortez, just south of the town of El Golfo de Santa Clara, you may have had lunch at a beach restaurant called "Johnny's Place," which is locat...
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The cuisine of Sinaloa: Cenadurias in Mazatlan serve caldo and conversation
During the day visitors come down the long entranceway that gives this restaurant its name, asking if it is open. Despite the sign at the entrance to El Tunel, showing the opening time 5:30 p.m. ...
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Baja California Sur side trip: Mision San Javier
The church, considered one of the most beautiful and well preserved of the Californias, was built with stone taken from quarry from the bed of the brook of Santo Domingo 20 km southeast of San Javier. Its original baroque appearance has been well preserved. It has three bells, two of them are dated 1761 and the other, 1803.
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Tortilla run: a day in Tijuana
We woke at 7 a.m. to the blaring horn of the propane truck " beepbeeeeeepbeepbeeeeeeeeep " and wonder if he will ever buy a muffler for that dang truck.
We dress quickly so that we can get to the ...
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A newbie Gabacho in Mexico
First Taxi Ride.
I parked my car on the US side of the border as I had no idea what to expect if I drove into Mexico. Will I need a passport? Some kind of international driver's license? Better to...
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North to Nogales from Puerto Vallarta (and back)
Two years ago, I would've been leery about driving out of Mexico alone.
Well, "everyone says" that the drive to Nogales (from Puerto Vallarta) is a drag: long, flat, boring, and nothing to see - somet...
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The Baja Highway from top to bottom
The highway down off the central plateau to the Sea of Cortés at sunset was stunning, as though we were driving through southern Utah with a coastline.
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Guided tour at the La Paz, Museum
During our Mexican travels, it was often said to us by veteran travelers to Mexico that one travels to the Baja for the "beaches" and that one goes to mainland Mexico for the "culture". That may be jus...
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Walking the walk, talking the talk - a dream in Baja
On a surf-pounded beach in Baja Sur, I sat with my family of five, in a circle of campers around a crackling bonfire. The flickering flames cast each storyteller’s face in turn with a ruddy glow. The...
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Mexico beach Christmas
The trailer was packed, the three kids and the dog were loaded into the van as final preparations were made for the "journey to the end of the earth". For us, Baja truly seemed land's end. Nobody we kn...
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Manana at the lighthouse
Mañana is a Mexican word that I struggle to understand. I continue to learn more about this word every time that I travel in Mexico. One of my earliest lessons was learned at the lighthouse that prote...
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Baja communities play a key role in conservation
Those moments when you can spontaneously interact with a wild animal, one on one, in their environment - whether it's under the ocean, on a mountain, in the middle of the desert - are pretty special, life changing even.
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Life goes on in Todos Santos despite the changes
Down narrow, winding, desert Highway 19, an hour past the last golf course in Cabo San Lucas, lies quiet Todos Santos, a Mexican hamlet with just over 3,400 residents, on the Pacific side of southern B...
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Sonora - Mexico's wild west
During the heyday of westerns, films showed cowboys riding through the Great Sonoran Desert from Arizona to what is now the State of Sonora in Mexico. The desert is still there and so are the cowboys.
...
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Tijuana, a taste of Mexico
Tijuana boasts a bullfight ring, racetracks for both dogs and horses, a jai alai fronton, golf courses, museums and cultural centers, a beautiful beach nearby, and other attractions not found in other ...
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Tijuana hotels and dining
Photos by Robert Mohr © Robert Mohr 2006
People in Latin countries are usually out visiting in the evenings, having fun and listening to street musicians and eating at any of the well-lit taco ...
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Tijuana, a taste of Mexico
Tijuana boasts a bullfight ring, racetracks for both dogs and horses, a jai alai fronton, golf courses, museums and cultural centers, a beautiful beach nearby, and other attractions not found in other ...
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Tijuana: a taste of Mexico - part 3
Tijuana: A Taste of Mexico
Part III
Serious Shopping for the Serious Shopper
By David Roland © David Roland 2006
Photos by Robert Mohr © Robert Mohr 2006
...
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The Baja - links on Mexico Connect
THE BAJA
The wild and beautiful peninsula of Baja California is as close as your computer read more
The wild and beautiful peninsula of Baja California is as close as your computer read more
Beach-bumming it in Mazatlan
Crooked under one arm, he lovingly hugs a water-beaten body board as if it were his best friend. A mass of dirty blonde dreadlocks crowns his scalp and from under sun-faded Hawaiian shorts, his bronzed...
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Mazatlan - not just another resort
Angela Peralta is a big name in Mazatlán (mah-saht-LAHN). And practically everyone, especially the locals, are happy to tell you "the real story" about this legendary, Mexican diva. Only every story y...
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Old Mazatlan has its charms
At first glance, Mazatlán looks like a typical Mexican beach resort with boxy high-rise hotels and loud nightclubs crowding its shoreline, but there is more to this old port city than meets the eye. T...
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The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck
Back in 1940, just before Pearl Harbour, John Steinbeck and his marine biologist friend, Ed Rickets, chartered a fishing boat, the Western Flyer, in Monterey, California, and sailed down the coast around the Baja into the Sea of Cortez. Their six-week mission was to collect specimens of marine life in the area. They jointly wrote a book about the voyage, largely about marine biology, which was published in 1941. A decade later, Steinbeck himself wrote this more personal book. The result is a mixture of travel writing, journalism, diary-keeping, philosophy, meditation and, yes, there's a lot of stuff about the marine life of the area. After all, the author was something of an authority in that field.
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The Devil's Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea
This is the story of a group of men who have become known as the Yuma 14. They are the fourteen illegal immigrants who died attempting to cross the Arizona border in May, 2001. And what a terrible and upsetting story it is. Unknown numbers of these illegal immigrants die every year making the dangerous crossing on foot over one of the most inhospitable stretches of terrain in the world. But the Yuma 14 constituted the largest known number of such immigrants to die at one time.
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The Guaymas Chronicles: La Mandadera by David E. Stuart
Although it's about Mexico, this one starts off in Ecuador in the 1960s where the author was doing doctoral fieldwork for a dissertation on haciendas in that country. His work took him to a remote research station on the side of a mountain seventy miles from electricity, running water, telephones, etc. One day while riding his horse along the side of a gorge, with the bottom of a canyon almost a thousand feet below him, the horse stumbled and fell. On its way over the edge it rolled over Stuart and disappeared, leaving him badly crippled. He was rescued and eventually found his way to Guaymas, on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, in Mexico, where his fiancé, Iliana, lived. Thus begins the story of his recuperation and, at the same time, the exploration of Mexican society and customs which is described here.
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