Every so often there’s an adrenaline-rush day for the small craft operators in Bahia Tenacatita, as illustrated in this photo taken by Aimee aboard sv Terrapin. Is the “Featured Image” missing above? Visit this post on GalivantsTravels.com.
West Coast accessories?
The first time we saw a dinghy with wheels, on a shiny new boat from California, we thought it was another example of what some of us from the little states in the eastern US think of as West Coast, over-the top, accessorizing.
Hauling the boat up the beach is easy when the wheels bolted to the transom are flipped down. Horsepower from the bocce players is useful too.
However we’re finding that a lot of the anchorages in the Pacific are open to the swell of half the Pacific ocean, and have marginal headlands to hide behind, or bays to enclose us. Our present dinghy is a ten-foot AB Alumina inflatable, more like an SUV than a kayak, as is appropriate for its duties as our one and only ‘do anything everywhere’ transportation interface. Doug has always wanted a strong dinghy, but it also has its disadvantages.
At nearly 200 pounds when loaded with a 15 hp outboard and a full tank, it’s not easy to drag up the beach. Being inflatable, it’s not a good rowing boat. Despite its aluminum floor, we wouldn’t want to drag it over rocks, or even sand. And on some beaches you have to pull the boat up pronto, before the next wave, and pull it a long way. Once we understood what the wheels were for, we wanted some.
One basic theory is to put down your wheels and wait just beyond the line where the waves reveal themselves. When you see a potential big one, rev up and try to stay just on its back side. That way you get carried as far in as possible up. Then, hop out of the boat (you’re dressed for wetting, I hope) and haul it up before the next wave breaks. The steeper the beach, the more important this becomes. In some places, with careful timing, and a lot of luck, one might feasibly hop out in dry pants, maybe even dry shoes!
A second theory, which works pretty well on the flat beach of Tenacatita, is to not deploy the wheels. Sometimes the wheels hitting the ground can brake you before you’re clear of the surf break. But then you have the full weight of the dinghy to deal with; the trouble is getting it far enough up the beach to avoid it washing away on the incoming tide on a long day away.
The local pangueros are expert at landing on the beach – that’s what their boats are designed for. But they have 20′ high-bowed boats*, bigger engines, and a transom deeper in the water, so the prop keeps a better bite. They often back in, with the propellor a bit lifted and the bow lifting nicely to the breakers. Sometimes someone (the junior crew member!) jumps in the water to keep everything lined up. Usually when a panga delivers you to a beach, you can step right off onto sand.
The panga is designed to be operated from a beach.
Most important lesson so far
Don’t get in front of the breaking wave if at all possible, and especially, don’t get sideways to it. Also, the kill switch, which turns the engine off when the clip is pulled: you want its lanyard on your wrist and the switch in good working order. You could dump the dinghy, douse your outboard in salt water, lose whatever you were carrying, etc. Better not to chop up the remains while you’re at it. Who needs that kind of excitement?
This is the surf landing we’re practicing up for. This photo was borrowed from the blog svyolo.com, in a post called Pitchpoled in Tenacatita.
Two families with four young children between them, headed ashore in kayaks last year, and got in too far to turn back. They got dumped on the way in, and as conditions worsened with the tide, they decided to stay at the hotel down at the end of the beach, rather than take on the waves they photographed above.
It’s an interesting story, since the hotel isn’t set up for that kind of guest, and they weren’t set up to be there. But it reinforces one of our rules, which is: when you go ashore, no matter where you think you are going, always take shoes and always take money.
Feel the surge!
The other day we had some surge-y conditions, and I don’t think anyone went ashore. According to surf sites like magicseaweed.com, there was a 2.3 meter swell train from the northwest, trending down some violent-looking weather systems battering northern California. And there was a 1.4 meter southwesterly swell, can’t say what is generating that without looking south of the equator. These were long period swells, up and down every 15 or 20 seconds. Listening, particularly in the wee hours, you can hear the boom of surf on the other side of the bay.
This swell, often 20 feet tall every 20 seconds, is getting them cranked in Hawail. This, or similar swells, can affect coasts thousands of miles away. magic seaweed.com
We are well-anchored, but it is disconcerting to watch our neighbors zooming forward, as if they’re getting underway, and to know that we’re doing the same ourselves. We just can’t feel the conveyor belt we’re riding.
Feel the Roll too
But we can certainly feel the side-to-side rolling that comes when the swell and the wind are perpendicular. There’s an accessory for that too. The flopper-stopper is rigged to hang from a pole stuck out the side of the boat. In the water is something that resists being lifted, but sinks readily, like a weighted platform, bucket, basket/check valve, or a big flat hinge. Even if it doesn’t stop the roll completely, it breaks the harmonic cycle. That’s one accessory we haven’t yet acquired.
The ‘traffic cone’ flopper stopper slows down the boat’s roll.
And no one is going ashore today, at least not in their dinghies. Surfing in would be one problem, getting back out would be another kind, and maybe more difficult.
Landing on the beach lessons cancelled today. Photo courtesy of sf-terrapin.com
Launch techniques
We’re learning that the wheels aren’t always the answer to getting out either. The problem is that they leave the bow of the dinghy down, easy for the waves to break into while you’re trying to get into the dinghy, get the engine started, get the passenger aboard, stay steered straight out, etc.
They’re just about to make their move, and did a great job of it, for an appreciative audience.
As for ourselves, well, we sometimes come home wet, and glad of a dry bag for storing things. It does help to decide early who is calling the shots, or you’ll both get doused in the space between go, go, go and wait, wait, wait!
Footnote about the panga
*from Wikipedia, I learned this about the ubiquitous panga.
The original panga design was developed by Yamaha as part of a World Bank project circa 1970.
Key features of the panga design are a high bow, narrow waterline beam, and a flotation bulge along the gunwale, or top edge of the hull. The high bow provides buoyancy for retrieving heavy nets, and minimizes spray coming over the bow. The narrow beam allows the hull to be propelled by a modest-sized outboard motor. The flotation bulge along the gunwale provides increased stability at high angles of roll.
The original Yamaha panga design had a length of 22 feet (6.7 m), and a waterline beam of approximately 5 feet 6 inches (1.7 m).
Pangas are usually between 19 and 28 feet (5.8 and 8.5 m) in length, with capacities ranging from 1 to 5 short tons (0.89 to 4.46 long tons; 0.91 to 4.54 t) and powered by outboard motors of between 45 and 200 hp (34 and 149 kW). Their planing hulls are capable of speeds in excess of 35 knots (40 mph; 65 km/h)
We arrived here on Christmas Day, after a nice sail around Cabo Corrientes, under the light of a gloriously full moon. Full moon brings with it a whole different set of thoughts than a dark and windy night, especially when it’s Christmas Eve and you can imagine a world full of people looking for Santa’s sleigh silhouetted on the very moon we’re watching.
They like to call this the Costa Alegre, alegre meaning cheerful. Happy, joyful, maybe a little drunk, says one dictionary.
When we arrived in the middle of the afternoon, there were a handful of Big Mexican Motor Yachts, who left within hours. And there were just two other cruising boats in this capacious bay. Everyone else had gone to the next bay for a Christmas pot-luck dinner. Out came the swim ladder and into the warm salty pool we slid. The water really was 84 degrees. I don’t even remember the dinner, but I’m sure it was pot-luck too. And alegre.
Since then a cruising community has slowly been evolving, to the point that there were 40 other boats here last week, although now half have moved on.
What’s Here?
There’s a half-mile of beach, punctuated by all-inclusive resort, Los Angeles Locos, (formerly Blue Bay) at the far end. The hotel suffered damage during Hurricane Patricia, but is up and running. The vegetation is recovering and the sand has been pushed back down onto the beach. Behind the road was a shrimp farm owned by the hotel, but that’s still being rebuilt.
At the near end there’s a palapa-roofed restaurant called La Vena, a tent campground, and the barred mouth of a small river which wanders back into the mangroves for a couple miles. There are herons and chacalacas (turkey-like birds) and terns and no doubt much else upstream, even some small crocodiles. Don’t molest them, say the signs. Don’t worry!
Supplies, groceries and the like, are available not too far away, but not too close either. The small town of La Manzanilla is three miles across the bay by water, when it’s not too rough, or half an hour by taxi. The bigger towns of Barra de Navidad and Melaque are in the next bay, about 14 miles southeast. And a cell phone tower twinkles, although it sometimes seems that’s all it does.
The Mayor and his constituency
Tenacatita is the kind of place some people stay for months, and come to year after year. So perhaps it’s fitting that there be a Mayor; Robert aboard Harmony of Alameda is the latest, and maybe the longest serving too, although I suspect that the First Lady, aka “The Lovely Miss Virginia” is the real Mayor. Being a background Empress myself, I recognize the signs.
They keep the morning radio net going, and the social calendar up-to-date, and generally know what’s going on. The Mayor also hosts a Friday afternoon raft-up.
Robert, the Mayor of Tenacatita, surveys his constituency on New Year’s Eve. ‘Bring your drinks, and a plate, and some food to share. And make sure to bring plenty of food, because the mayor is always hungry” is the weekly announcement. You’ll be asked to introduce yourself, and sometimes there is a talent show, or jokes, or show and tell, or a topic for discussion.
Turtle launch
The hotel ‘rescues’ sea turtle eggs, holds them until they hatch, and then involves the hotel guests, particularly the children, in the ‘launch.’
The security guards try to calculate when the eggs will hatch. Then they move the hatchlings into a concrete tub until nightfall, when it is deemed safer for the turtles to be released to the sea.New Year’s was a busy time, 90-plus sea turtle hatchlings and nearly as many kids.This turtle is ready to get swimming“Hurry up! We’re almost there!” Photo courtesy of WorldWlidlifeFederation.org
Boys at play
“Bocce on the beach at 2 PM” is the main item on the social calendar. It’s usually followed by drinks in the palapa. It’s not always all men playing – anyone is welcome. But the women tend to walk the beach or sit in the shade and chat while the men knock bocce balls around.
One of our neighbors in the anchorage, John Rogers aboard Moonshadow, who took the top picture of Galivant (foreground) and Gia from his masthead, also saw these dolphins using his anchor chain as a fin scratcher, and went to investigate, camera in hand. Image courtesy of ‘Lectronic Latitude 38.
Several years ago I read a book called Beautiful Minds, which compared intelligent animals, particularly primates and cetaceans. I was struck by the authors’ observation that, because of the environment in which they lived, their anatomy, and the tools not available to them, dolphins and whales have few options and many limitations when compared to the great apes. Backscratchers would just be the start of the list.
In the spring, we left Galivant propped on stands, out of the water, in Guaymas for the summer, as we had done the year before. We drove back across the country to Maryland, smelling some roses on the way, to finish some house projects. And then in October we drove back in a minivan loaded with boat bits, arriving again in Guaymas at the end of the month, about when the Sonoran summer weather began to cool down to the 70s and 80s.
Flooding in Guaymas
We had seen photos of flooding in Guaymas, the result of over a meter of rain in just a couple hours on October 2, which left thousands at least temporarily homeless and roads washed out, according to thenews.mx. So we weren’t sure what we’d find.
There was a meter of rain in just a few hours, overwhelming the roads and sewers.The malecon flooded too. In the far far background on the other side of the bay is the dry-storage boatyard where Galivant was hauled out. We got excited when we saw this picture, but there apparently the boatyard stayed high and well-drained. Photos from thenews.mx.
Everyone we asked in the downtown area pictured above just shrugged. In short, downtown was dried out and back in business with no problems readily discernible to the outsider.
Roadwork too
But there is a lot of new, and necessary, road work going on. There is major work on the road to the boatyard, involving an extensive excavation one foot over and three feet down from every passing tire. New water pipe awaits installation nearby. There were numerous shifting detours through pot-holed and puddled neighborhoods. Washed-out dirt-rock side roads are gradually being graded, even paved. Poles, piles of rocks, and other eclectic markers keep the alert day-time driver clear of missing manhole covers. Driving in town was quite the adventure this year.
The new gobernadora* may be the one responsible, or maybe it’s been in the mill for years, brought forward by the big rain. Certainly, everyone, –drivers and water users, roadside business owners, bus passengers and cyclists– anyone who uses the roads or depends upon those who do — will breathe a huge sigh of relief when the holes, ruts, potholes, and ditches are finally filled in and evenly paved.
A public banner showing a couple delighted at the state of the new road behind them. This is a badly exposed picture, and from the state of Nayarit (looks like the Punta de Mita road) not Sonora besides. But the sentiments are surely the same. The companion banner showed workers applying bright yellow paint to a speed bump (tope), which would also be cause for rejoicing were it the new standard.
We spent a long month out of the water at Gabriel’s Marina Guaymas working on things. We still like it there, finding it a friendly and straightforward do-it-yourself yard. What’s to Like about living in the shipyard tells you more about that! Nonetheless, we’re not motivated to linger longer than necessary when there’s so much to see and do over the horizon.
Finally free to move, we faced a decision: should we head back to familiar places on the Baja side of the Sea of Cortez?
Last winter we stayed in the Sea of Cortez, and we enjoyed it thoroughly. We found the rugged Baja scenery striking, and liked the exotic emptiness of the landscape. I read as much as I could about the area (a lot about geology), and would like look around some more.
It was nice, but it was also – well, cold would be an exaggeration, perhaps an offense to those under the chilly mantle of actual winter. In fact, despite the occasional dips of overnight temperatures into the low fifties, the days were usually sunny and seventy plus – pretty pleasant in my book. But I do like to don my snorkel and mask, but not my wetsuit, and swim along the shoreline looking at whatever there is to see. And the water temperature never got above the mid-sixties, which is – cold! Too cold for a whiney woman in a lycra suit, anyhow.
So this year, lured by daily morning radio reports from other boats of balmy temperatures (“water in the pool 83 degrees”), we turned south from Guaymas.
Heading South
The trip out of the Sea of Cortez can be broken into comfortable legs with stops along the Baja peninsula, but we took the straight-down-the-middle approach, which made for a roughly 600-mile trip to Punta de Mita at the mouth of Banderas Bay. It took us five days.
This is not our actual track, which was more of a downwind zig-zag. Map courtesy of geology.com, I think.
The winds at this time of year are almost always northwest or some variant thereof, which, since we were going southeast, might be considered a fair breeze. Driven by systems ‘across the fence’ (that’s how Geary the weather guy refers to the US and Canada), the northerlies can be strong and persistent. Those steady 20+-knot winds that send us south (and keep us there!) also chunk the seas up into short square blocks. “Seas five to eight feet at five seconds” is not an uncommon weather report, and one that makes for uncomfortable sailing conditions.
So when you wish your friends “fair winds”, make sure to add on “smooth seas” too. Also, by the time we got moving, the moon was in its last quarter, rising after 2 am and dimly, when not clouded over entirely. I seem to have spent a lot of time in my life waiting for a moon to rise, then being surprised by it when it does!
The trip south was a mix of screaming along downwind at the northern end and drifting along in not-enough wind at the southern end. We’re a little cautious (or is that lazy?) about sailing efficiently in the dark of night. It’s a complicated rig of hardware, poles and guys, that keeps the sails from crumpling as we roll off the waves. We mainly don’t want to have to spend much time on a rollicking foredeck when we can’t really see all that’s happening. So we tend to reef early and accept compromises to speed in the name of comfort.
Afloat in the universe
The occasional freighter bound for Guaymas or Topolabampo passed at a distance but otherwise, it was just us and our modest red, green and grey navigation and instrument lights. While one of us sleeps, the other sits alone in the dark in the middle of the sea contemplating the universe. I suspect there is sometimes napping as well.
Anyhow, there’s plenty to think about. The firmament, for one, beneath whose dome only we two know that we are here, a minuscule moving mote. I think about the generations long gone who studied and named the night sky, and of the eons beyond counting that the stars have endured, and will endure, beyond whatever we can do to our planet. So, alone, even melancholy, and yet exhilarated too, by the luxury of real darkness in this age of artificial light.
The heavens may be “empty” and silent, but the nearer world of water, ceaselessly sloshing inches away, is anything but quiet or still. The waves do the same thing over and over, only differently each time. It’s mesmerizing. The laws of physics seem quite reliable, gravity in particular.
Breathing metaphors come to mind, heaves and pants, hisses and sighs. It does seem wrong to associate the ocean with breath, because of course it’s the last thing you can do in it. So stay on the boat, keep the water out and maintain buoyancy throughout at all costs!
We always think these shortish coastal passages are harder on the crew than ocean passages lasting weeks. On the short haul, it’s harder to find the rhythm of sleep and watch-keeping, and closer to land, there are more ways to get into trouble. But short trips end soon enough, and then you’ll wake up to find someplace new and different.
Out the galley window as we arrive in La Cruz de Huancaxtel, Banderas Bay. I wonder what’s in there?
Footnote:
*There was a nationwide election in Mexico in June 2015, and the winner for governor in the state of Sonora was the PRI candidate, Claudia Pavlovich, the blonde woman on the political posters which sprouted on roadsides throughout the spring. Although she lost Guaymas proper to the PAN, she won statewide with about 47 percent of the vote.
And the PRI is the party that ruled Mexico for much of the previous century. It is also the party of the country’s current president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
One of the nicest places we sailed to in 2015 is the bay called San Juanico on the Sea of Cortez. On the chart it’s also called Punta San Basilio and lies about 26 22 N, 111 25.7 W, halfway up the Baja California peninsula. This is not to be confused with San Juanico the surfer/fisherman town at Scorpion Bay on the Pacific side. Please see the Photo Gallery at the bottom of this post – more pictures than words this time!
Looking north over San Juanico bay and anchorage from the ‘ridge trail’ above the south shore.
Squint or zoom and you’ll see a couple of empty houses on the far shore, fancy by some standards (swimming pool!) but realistic in terms of the ten or fifteen miles of dirt road that separate this spot from the highway, and the thirty or so beyond from Loreto, the nearest town.
Here’s how it looks from the sky, courtesy of Google Earth.
San Juanico by Google Earth. The houses are where the dirt road comes in from the north. The main estuary comes in about 9 o’clock and the ranchito, a small estuary and the ridge trail about 6:30.
You might see a couple of RV or pickup truck campers on the beach. Only the relatively intrepid people make it this far. The smart ones come year after year and stay for weeks on end, driving out occasionally for water and supplies. It’s muuuuy tranquilo here.
But for the most part San Juanico is visited by boaters like us. It’s one of the better anchorages, with protection from the prevailing winter northwesterlies and the summer southerlies. Although, I can testify that an uncomfortable swell can and does roll in around that northeast point when the winter winds are up.
You can walk along the roads, or on some trails along the estuaries or atop one of the ridges. If you try to walk all the way to the highway (and don’t bake or desiccate first) you’ll pass a small encampment where a family sometimes has vegetables to sell. We also heard of a place with petroglyphs but never stumbled upon it. Maybe next time…
Between the hikes and the beaches and excursions by dinghy for fishing and whale-watching, you won’t even notice that there’s no word from the outside world. It’s as distant as the occasional con-trail overhead.
Our second visit coincided with Easter week, Semana Santa. The handful of RV people had gone back north. They were replaced by Mexican families, from Loreto and beyond, celebrating what must be the biggest holiday week of the year. Fishing, popup sleeping tents, shade tents, kids playing in the sand, it was all great to see.
By the end of the week they too were gone.The beach again belonged to the seagulls, the bay to the yachts moving north toward their summer homes.
Easter eve beach campfire.The cardon cactus has a wood-like frame, and stands in for driftwood.The Easter Chicken visited Galivant.The bocce champions.
San Juanico Photo Gallery
So without further ado, let’s look at some pictures of the bay and the land around it.
Sunsets have endless variety. Cool…
to vivid.
Sunrises also nice.
Flowers in surprising places.
Honeybees love this yellow flower.
It’s a picture of the butterfly, but aren’t the flowers nice too?
Portrait-worthy still lives everywhere.
It’s a tree, a cool looking tree, with a name. But I don’t know it.
A rocky ridge overlooking Playa Ramada, Punta Pulpito on the horizon.
Behind the south side beach, the arroyo is stony with a small wet pool and a bright white cliff. Here we saw a long skinny snake chasing a gecko, until they saw us and both vanished.
Mirador Rober even has seating. My chair is empty because after several attempts at self-portraiture, I realized I still had titanium dioxide on my nose and lips.
Estuary goes further inland than we went.
An brackish estuary behind the beach.
Whatever this is (?sea cucumber family?) lives in the estuary and grazes on the vegetation with enthusiasm.
The estuary again.
Low tide, Galivant in the background
Looking north over San Juanico bay and anchorage from the ‘ridge trail.
A spot on the ridge trail where something has fallen away. We started a new trail about ten feel inland
South side.
A line of pelicans coming in for a landing.
A small eroded hill on the edge of an arroyo
Raft of, I think, eared grebes. We saw the dark shape of this shoal of birds from up on the hill as it shifted around. The formation always stay tight, but the color would shift as they dove en masse. Back down in the dinghy we went to check them out.
I always let Doug go first to roust up the rattlesnakes, if any.
Better without a caption!!
A lot of geologic movement has taken place on this coast over the eons.
Inside a VW camper.
Mountains upon mountains into the sunset. Hard to imagine that anyone has ever been to some of them.
Seagull in silhouette.
Rock strata and erosion piles.
Ranchito Santa Ana and the south-side anchorage
What a nice sign! The shells are nailed into the ?sandstone. Making use of the materials at hand.
Along the dunes at Ranchito Santa Ana
Ranchito Santa Ana
Wire lobster on the shelf outside the ranchito.
The essentials of life off the grid.
Rock formations redux.
The headland on one side of Playa Ramada.
No sand on this beach, just stones, plus some old coral from a previous geologic age, eroded down from one of the many curious layers.
The smaller estuary and the arroyo beyond.
Newly graded road comes here. What next?
Ospreys nest on the pinnacles.
Semana Santa brings happy families to camp on the beach.
Looking roughly SW across the bay.
What we see in the water at night.
The little black dots are obsidian, very sharp volcanic glass, also known as Apache Tears.
Whoever might live here will really enjoy the ever-changing views.
The skin and feathers of ?eared grebe. We saw several of these, no bones, no guts, just clean dry feathers and skin blowing along the beach. What eats the rest?
Chowder with fresh-caught ‘chocolate’ clams.
Rut Road! When it rains, it sometimes rains torrentially. When these roads become impassable, they stay that way for a while.
Santa Rosalia is unusual among the towns of Mexico, because it was designed and built from scratch, mostly from wood, more than a century ago, by the French, specifically by the French mining empresa Compagne du Boleo. Plus, all the mine’s industrial buildings were right in town. And they still are, deteriorating scenically to this day. For some reason, century-old dereliction is more appealing than the modern type.
From up on the Mesa Frances you can look down on the entire town.
The Compagnie du Boleo to Minera Boleo
The story is that a local rancher, José Villavicenio, found a “crumbly blue-green rock” which assayed out to very pure copper, a boleo.
Housing for the workers was built in the arroyo, while the mine officials lived on the plateau above, called the Mesa Frances
So, with the encouragement of the Mexican government, the Boleo Company created the town of Santa Rosalia out of nothing, and brought in 6,000 souls to run the port, smelter, railway, and mines.
One of the seven original locomotives. Old machinery and ore cars can be found in various places throughout the town.
There were numerous tunnels in the four arroyos.
Mining took place in four arroyos, named Inferno, Purgatory, Solitude and Providence, the arroyo where the town was located. (An arroyo is a steep-sided gully cut by running water in an arid or semiarid region.)
A slowly collapsing tower ?for loading? dominates this corner of the waterfront.
By the way, most of this quick overview is based on the writings of Graham MacIntosh in his entertaining book Journey with a Baja Burro written in the late 1990s, and Joseph Wood Krutch, The Forgotten Peninsula, published in 1960, and on the reader boards at the Boleo Museum, which were not in any way improved by my sketchy translations and imperfect memory of them.
Compagnie du Boleo headquarters, accounting offices and storeroom, now a museum.
Eventually there were 370 miles of tunnels and 25 miles of railroad track, 7 locomotives I think, and over a hundred ore cars.
Timber bridge over arroyo, courtesy of Boleo Mining Museum.Locomotive and ore cars courtesy of Boleo Mining Museum
The company closed in 1954. Wikipedia says a government-owned company took it over and ran it with the original technology (!) until the 1980s, when it just became too impractical.
In addition to interesting-sounding mineral-ites, “even turquoise”, MacIntosh says there are old dolls, miner’s lamps, broken pottery and the like lying around settlements that existed at some of the mine entrances. We started out on our bicycles for an inland excursion, but between a surfeit of rocks and ruts on the dirt roads and a deficit of space on the highway, we gave up.
Nowadays there is a Korean-Canadian consortium ramping up for renewed production of zinc sulfate, copper, cobalt and manganese. In early 2015, we heard that operations had finally commenced on an open smelter several miles north of town. The proposed underground operations have perhaps hit a snag or two, but hiring is taking place.
The gist of the sign is that if you’re interested in working at the mine you can attend a 2-day presentation. The first day explains what goes on in the underground tunnels. The second day they take you to the tunnels and show you around.
Surely conditions will be better than those for the workers at the turn of the century.
This is fourth panel of a nice four-part mural at the Boleo Musem. The others are in the gallery below.
In addition to conditions in the tunnels, somewhere I read that between 1900 and 1910 some three thousand lives were lost because of gas explosions and poisonous vapors from the smelters.
Another dawn for the deteriorating industrial buildings along the waterfront, most of which have been there for at least a century. Connecting the two chimneys you can see the ‘Great Wall’ of Sta. Rosalia, an on-the-ground chimney built to move noxious smelter fumes away from town ..
In an attempt to solve this problem, an “extension chimney” was built from the smelter downtown to a new chimney higher up.
Church, named for Santa Barbara, reputedly designed by Charles Eiffel of the Paris Tower fame, prefabricated in Europe and assembled in place.
An often-mentioned attraction in town is the Eiffel (as in Tower)- designed church, remarkable perhaps not for its delicacy and grace, but for its prefabricated utility. The story goes that the women of town wanted a church; a mine official found this one languishing in a warehouse somewhere in Europe and sent it over. I like that it is named for Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners. And Santa Rosalia was a religious hermit who lived in a cave on Mt. Pellegrino, Palermo, Italy, and died there in 1166.
No one comments so much on the beauty of the design as on the curiosity of the structure.
Meanwhile, in today’s Santa Rosalia, home to almost 12,000 in the 2010 census, many of the accommodations built for the workers still exist, including the Mutualist Progressive Society and a nicely sky-lit market. There is a ‘celebrated’ French bakery, but the bread, sadly, is not French. Government agencies seem to have appropriated the nice wooden bungalows of the managerial class in the Mesa Frances, while down in the arroyo some of the wooden houses have grown comfortable under the shade of a surprising number of trees.
I’ll bet all this shade is welcome when the heat of summer comes around.
There has been architectural ‘re-muddling’ of course, but also some maintenance sensitive enough to pattern the new concrete walls to match the former wood siding. There is also some curious re-roofing that looks like sprayed on closed-cell foam with a heavy coat of paint for sun protection.
Side street in old town
Hurricane Odile
It was the mine office, now the museum, and victim of Hurricane Odile. That’s the “Great Wall” climbing towards the chimney on the hill.
Hurricane Odile, September 2014, lifted a number of roofs, including parts of the Boleo museum. And it killed the Korean manager of the mine and his assistant when their car was carried by a torrent of water into the harbor.
Another casualty was one of the two marinas in town. By all reports this place was ‘funky’ and nearly derelict, but ‘fun’. But to the distress of the half a dozen or so boats tied there when Odile’s winds and rains came through, the docks broke apart, pilings broke or crumpled, and not a boat went unscathed.
An especially sad story is that of Gold Eagle, formerly a well-tended wooden 1977 Murray Peterson schooner.
It must be heartbreaking for the owner of this vessel, who spent years in its restoration, to be faced with this now.
There is a campaign to raise funds and help him get the boat to a better situation, such as a place where repairs could proceed. If you Google around you’ll find more about the troubles he had even after the storm. https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/5ssRf
Gold Eagle aside, Santa Rosalia felt like a reasonably prosperous place. There was traffic, often consisting of late model pickup trucks. There was a gym with people exercising, a store selling clothes for dogs. There were even a couple ‘fancy shops’ selling things like lamps and other home decor items, and stylish clothing.
Entropy in Action
It’s perverse of me I know to admire the aged and falling-down industrial plant. I can’t recognize what anything was, but I like the big pieces of lumber, the lacy roofs, the rust, the skeletal frame remains of ??? – all so atmospheric. I’d like to integrate it into a cool hotel. It would take a billionaire, I guess, an interested and well-connected one, and a town that needed such a hotel. In the meantime, I guess it will just sit as is, awaiting developments.
The breakwater was originally made from mine tailings, but has clearly undergone many changes.
The ferry between Guaymas and Santa Rosalia runs a couple times a week, an all day or all night trip, There are passenger cabins and space for cars, but not too many, I’m guessing.
The other Santa Rosalia
No visit to town for me is complete without a visit to its shadow town, the cemetery. I was looking for graves of some of those thousands who died in the mine’s early days, but there were none, at least none with headstones.
The cemetery in Santa Rosalia is above the town on a mesa overlooking the sea. I’m not sure if this section is older, or just poorer. In the distance, San Marcos, an island where gypsum is mined.In Santa Rosalia there is a large cemetery atop the mesa opposite the managerial Mesa Frances, with a variety of tombstone styles.
We did meet people who disliked Santa Rosalia. For one thing. apparently the town dump is on the main highway, the first thing you see coming by road. Not everyone is a fan of falling-down mining equipment. However, for me, I suspect that when I finish with Baja California I’ll still agree with Graham MacIntosh, who finds Santa Rosalia to be its most interesting town.
Well, what do you think?
Here’s a gallery of photos that didn’t fit into the post. More to follow perhaps. I’m also still working on the map plug-in, but for now, Santa Rosalia is about halfway down the Sea of Cortez side of the Baja California peninsula.
Copper ingots for shipment to Guaymas and points beyond.
The Club de Lectura has posted aphorisms like this throughout the town.
I think it’s an eared grebe, sleeping.
A nice town library, though not too many books. When I asked why Mahatma, the clerk tapped her head to indicate that he was very ‘mental’.
