Santa Rosalia and Mulege – Slow Dancers Voyage

Our week and a half in Santa Rosalia was mostly spent trying to keep cool! The temperature stayed between 90 and 100 with 80% humidity most days. We purchased a large water cooled fan to help and spent lots of time at the marina pool. Most restaurants are open air, but a couple of coffee shops and restaurants have air conditioning, we frequented these! We enjoyed the street tacos and many small shops. Santa Rosalia began as a French copper mining town that was founded in the 1800’s. Many remnants of the French influence are still apparent. These include a French bakery, a church that was created by the designer of the Eiffel tower and moved in pieces to Santa Rosalia, as well as the Mahatma Gandhi library. Not many gringos here now. The locals are friendly, but most speak no English, so our Spanish became the only way to communicate….that was scary! We are learning, however 🙂

On Saturday, Aug 4 together with the Nilaya crew, we boarded a bus to head the one hour south to Mulege, a palm lined tropical oasis located a bit inland on a river. Our first sign should have been the hour late bus! Upon boarding, we found out that the air conditioner was broken on the large tourist bus. OK, we can stand one hour. Drenched in sweat, we arrived at our destination. The bus station was on the outskirts of the town. It was a small building on a dirt strip of highway with bars on the windows. Well, here we are…..now what. We hiked in the sweltering heat along the highway toward a small tienda where we asked directions to a restaurant that we had heard about. Farther down the road we went. This didn’t look like the tropical oasis that the guidebook told us about. We found the restaurant, upstairs in a building. It was cooler, thanks to ceiling fans and we enjoyed lunch. After eating, we decided to hike the mile or so to an old prison that was now a museum. We were not told that it was uphill along washed out dirt roads. Feeling like the last teams on Amazing Race, we hiked toward the prison. Up the switchbacks, we could see it ahead…..almost there! Made it, and looked down over the town and river. The palm trees did look pretty. OK, let’s tour this prison. What?? Closed?! Back down the switchbacks toward the “town”. Most shops and restaurants were closed (probably due to the heat and the low season). We walked several of the main dirt streets, stopped at the shops that were open, looked down at the river (which didn’t seem to have many ways to access it) and found an air conditioned restaurant to park ourselves for the duration of our stay. Back out to the bus station and the (again!) late bus. Whew…this one had air conditioning! We had a nice ride back to Santa Rosalia and would have been content to sleep in this bus all night!

Although Santa Rosalia is a quaint little town with friendly people, we were anxious to cross the Sea of Cortez and continue our adventure on the Pacific coast of Mexico. There are two hurricanes south of us, no threat, but might kick up some wind and waves, so waiting and checking until we leave for San Carlos.