Todos Santos?

Unfortunately blogspot doesn't allow me to use italics in the titles of my posts, the title above should actually read "Todos Santos" (aka Are we all saints?"), which was the slogan of the cafe where we had lunch on our first day in town. I enjoyed this joke about the town's name just as much as I enjoyed the town itself! It was an entertaining place to wander and check out galleries and historic buildings, and we even stayed at an old sugar mill that has been converted into a small hotel.

 

Remains of the sugar mill at our hotel

 

The swimming pool was definitely added after they stopped producing sugar!

 

On our first evening in Todos Santos we hiked to the beach, which is a couple miles outside of town. It as a rare change of pace to stay where the waterfront is not the main attraction, in this case due to high surf, strong rip tides and the layout of the town. On the second day, we were herded into a hilarious exercise class by the instructor who was advertising by yelling out of her antique dune buggy that she was driving around town. After class we found out that she was also originally from Seattle, and she graduated from the same high school as my mom, albeit a decade earlier!

 

We then took a bus to Cerritos Beach, which claims to be the only safe swimming beach between Todos Santos and Cabo. It was quite packed with swimmers even though it was kind of a cloudy day. For afternoon entertainment, we watched a group of sun-phobic Oregonians dress and sunscreen their kids before they got in the water. It was a process that took hours and required lots of fretting and chasing the kids down the beach with giant jugs of white goo and pink floppy hats. At one point, when one of the mom's was spraying down her child dangerously close to our lunch table, she said something like "you just gotta be prepared when you're coming from OREGON!" And of course, thanks to all of their preparation, the weather turned more overcast and windy once they were finally ready to send their kids into the water. Mom and I decided to leave the foolish Oregonians behind and sneak into the hacienda on top of the hill that was overlooking the beach. I didn't get any good pictures, but it was gorgeous and deserted because it costs too much to stay there! Another highlight of the day for me was getting my mom to hitchhike back to Todos Santos after we narrowly missed the hourly bus that passes by on the highway. She was very skeptical, but we were picked up in just a few minutes by guess who? MORE OREGONIANS! They went totally out of their way to take us back to the driveway of our hotel, and we're still alive to speak about it! And of course, they were sunburnt!

 

 

Todos Santos main plaza from the church

First night sunset on the beach near town