Oh Mexico! Sounds so sweet with the sun sinkin' low...

Loreto was a much bigger town than we had seen in a while. 

There are US flights that fly directly into Loreto so a lot of people from US and Canada live here.  It has a beautiful Malencon (beach walk) that is stunning at sunrise AND sunset.

They have a charming old-world plaza with a mission church and families gather here while music plays in all the restaurants.

Our favorite part was a day trip we took to the little town of San Javier to visit the mission. The 40 minute drive through the mountains was stunning in and of itself, winding through mountains, little valleys, and passing goats and “Mexican deer” (cows) leisurely meandering down the road.

But the tiny town (about 2 streets long) was just beautiful. The mission was founded in 1699 and they began building the church from 1744 to 1758.  It’s amazing to me that such architectural gems were able to be constructed that long ago in such a remote place.

Wouldn't you like to know what's happened in these walls?

Someone worked hard laying this stone.

I love all the old doors in these churches and l want to buy them to put in my house; this would mean my house would end up with 63 doors, but I'm ok with that. 

I wandered the grounds for a while and came across a vendor selling his wares of lava rock sculptures of the mission, homemade mango, guava, and papaya turnovers, and a mysterious bag of green stuff.  

When I naively asked what it was, he said “Marijuana.”  I was a bit surprised but went ahead and bought a little lava stone replica of the mission and caught back up with Patrick.  When I told him they were selling marijuana, he said, “No… they can’t be.”  He approached them, bought some of the turnovers and said, “What’s in the bag?”  “Oregano” was their response to him.  Guess they know a rube (me) when they spot one, and everyone (but me) thought it was funny.

We ate lunch across the street at “Betty’s Kitchen” with a perfect view of the mission.  

The cute guy on the right is mine.

No matter what you order it's usually pretty darn good.

As we sat there a gentleman came out and started to ring the mission bell.  We got pretty excited as the people talking behind us indicated the bell wasn’t rung that often.  Since it was noon on Sunday, we figured the bell was tolling out the time. It rang 1, 2, 3, ….10, 11, 12.  Then 13, 14, 15 and finally we lost count and had no idea exactly what might be the significance of the ringing.  We ate a slow lunch and about 30 minutes later he came out and rang the bell again for a random number of times.  Maybe he just felt the urge.  Definitely a beautiful place and a step back in time.

I would Air BnB here, wouldn't you?

 La Paz was our next stop. I love how most of the cities have some sort of sign or sculpture to mark the city entrance.

It was a good omen when we pulled in and there was a beautiful rainbow and sunset that evening. 

It also didn't hurt that the cafe had what were possibly the best cinnamon rolls we've ever tasted. (You knew there had to be a bakery in there somewhere, right?)

I won't tell you how many of these we had, but it was a number bigger than 5.

LaPaz is a fairly large city. - I know this because they had a Wal-mart, but a really cool one with sunshades for your car in the parking lot.

We spent one night here and then headed on to Tecolote where we were camping right on the beach again.  I can't begin to tell you how surreal it is to drive up and pick your own sand dune to park beside.  

and then look out the front window at this:

Patrick and I took the jeep around the bay and each turn revealed more glorious scenery.

We sat on the beach where vendors showed up promptly with fresh fruit cups - mine had watermelon and lime, but there was pineapple and papaya and a multitude of other tropical combinations.  I gotta tell you I feel like I'm perfectly suited to be a do-nothing sybarite who lays on the beach all day every day and I got a pretty good head start on it for the three days we were here.

We had some excitement one night when we spotted lights out on the beach. Turns out a young couple from France had driven their car on the beach and gotten it stuck.  Patrick was thrilled to use the jeep to winch them out...and it was some nice payback for when ANOTHER French couple towed us out of the sand in Alaska a couple of years ago.

The happy rescued couple.

 Walking the beach yielded little treasures like this puffer fish and of course, the views. 

It's hard to understand the vastness of the beach until you see a photo like this and realize there are so few people here.  Patrick says I should stop extolling the virtues and just save it all for us, but I'm a selfless kind of gal, so come on down.

El Triunfo

Alas, we had to move on so we packed up and continued south with a quick top at El Triunfo.  Mexico Route1 (basically the main and only road) has virtually no billboards and very few signs, but we saw multiple signs for El Triunfo.  

 

We're still not sure why...it does have an old mining site with a mining museum, and I think there was a music museum there, but the only thing we ended up being interested in was the El Triunfo cafe.

Their mouth-watering buttery croissants and french bread baked in their outdoor brick oven had us at "Hola".

There used to be croissants in that case but we bought them all. Sorry not sorry.

We had a perfect lunch there in their beautiful courtyard and snatched up pastries and bread like we were wild dogs.

My lunch date.

You know we bought some.

The town is charming with architectural gems like these:

Rancho Verde was a quick overnight stop up in the mountains where we had our own little palapa and Patrick took the opportunity to relax with Tilly.

While jeeping through the desert we discovered people living in the most remote places.  I guess this guy just tells everyone to turn at the car door because it was the only landmark on his dirt road.

So far, every road we've traveled here has led to some place magical.  And in the next blog I'll tell you where to get the elusive, magical, INTELLIGENT pill! Heaven knows some of us could use them.