Monday, August 30, 2010

My first marlin in Mexico

 More than 31 years ago I met up with my very good friend and former boss, Jay West in Mexico for a little adventure.  Jay had just sold his award winning, Billboard Magazine two time FM station of the year, and I was temporarily retired from an import business I had been partnered in. Also along for the trip was Bill Haniford. In the photo below, Jay is on the left, Bill in the center and I'm on the right.  There is a saying among some of my generation. It goes, "if you remember the 1960's, you weren't really there". For many of us that held true into the 70's. This trip was an example of that.

From L to R,  "Best wishes, Jay West", "Best fishes, Bill Haniford", and "I can't tuna piano, but I can sure tuna fish, Gary Field"


The other day, I was talking to Jay, who is also a collaborator on this blog. He was telling me that all these years he thought we took this trip in 1977.  Well, if you look at the date on the photo, you'll notice the date is January 1979. Nuff said. Jay and I were very much present for the 60's and 70's. Just a little fuzzy when it comes to the chronology. Let it be know, that the reasons for the fuzzy headedness are no longer present in Jay's or my life. But, there still might be the occassional memory lapse, or senior moment, if you will.
The marlins in this picture  are fairly small(approx. 180 lbs each) as the breed goes, but the fishing is so good around Los Cabos that even three somewhat less than alert amateurs like those pictured above, brought home these beauties. Now, everyone can fish like a pro in Los Cabos.

"Nine yellow fin tuna, four over 150 pounds and the others around one hundred pounds, in one day, for two anglers fishing within two miles of the shore. Repeat that for three days and you have a fishery unequaled anywhere" Zane Grey. Zane Grey was writing about the fishing at Cape San Lucas over 80 years ago in the book, Fishing Virgin Seas. But things change. Back in Zane Grey's day, the only way to get here was by boat.  An 800 mile trip down the coast of the Pacific bringing everything you needed with you. When you got here there were no roads, hotels, golf course....nothing. Now it is a an easy, gorgeous, three day drive through spectacular desert country. The Los Cabos International airport now brings more than a million visitors a year.  Accommodations range from hostels to world class resorts. You can also find some of the best golf and wind surfing in the world.


And don't forget the fishing.  This 581 pound black marlin won the Bisbees East Cape Offshore Tournament in Los Barriles in July this year, just a stones throw from Casa Latimer where we live. Just look at that fish! The next Bisbee is in Cabo San Lucas in October and the fish will be bigger and the town will be jumpin'.

. By the was, this wonderful beach front house can be yours. For more information just click on  http://caborealty.com/.

Los Cabos has it all. World class sports fishing, golf courses, wind surfing, laid back beach towns and the 24/7  entertainment center, Cabo San Lucas. Come see us and don't forget to tell your friends about www.CaboLiving.com.

ps We lost Bill. If anyone sees him, please send him home.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Cliff homes in Cabo San Lucas

Cliff Homes on Coast, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico

If your interested in learning more about owning real estate in Mexico be sure to go to our website at http://caborealty.com/ or email me at gary@caborealty.com 


Cliff Homes on Coast, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico

This beautiful poster and many more can be purchased and shipped to you. Just click on the photo or link above and enjoy!
Photographic Print
Cummins, Richard

Buy  at AllPosters.com

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

In Mexico, where the trouble isn't

I have been traveling in Mexico for over 30 years and have found it to be very safe. Always use common sense. Don't flash wads of cash or expensive jewelry.  Stay out of places you have no business being in. Always keep in mind that in most occasions "common sense" will keep you out of trouble.  For an informative view of where is safe, and where might not be so safe, see the article below.

In Mexico, where the trouble isn’t

Main square in Merida, Mexico
Here’s a tourism ad campaign for you:
“Yucatan. No drug-related killings in 2009 or the first half of 2010.”
Nobody’s actually putting those words into advertising. But as the drug wars worsen and debate persists about the risks of travel in Mexico, Yucatan is the only one of Mexico’s 31 states that can make that claim, according to a recent report.  Lying on the Atlantic coast, Yucatan includes the city of Mérida (in photo above) and draws many visitors with its pyramids, historic hacienda hotels and Mayan culture.
Its relative safety shows up in the Trans-Border Institute’s 2010 Mid-Year Report on Drug Violence in Mexico, written by Angelica Duran-Martinez, Gayle Hazard and Viridiana Rios.
“It didn’t surprise me,”  Rios said of Yucatan’s clean slate. As a non-border state, she said, “Yucatan is not a particularly good place for drug traffickers to do business. Yucatan is pretty peaceful.” For that matter, she added: “Mexico is actually pretty peaceful, if we compare it to other countries.”  (For a country-by-country ranking, which indicated that Mexico is safer than more than a dozen other Latin American countries, see the end of this post.)
In fact, the institute’s interim director, Charles Pope, said that for all the miseries visited upon Mexico since the drug war began in late 2006, the number of tourists killed in Mexico by narco-violence seems to be zero or maybe one, depending on whom you consider to be a tourist.
The debatable case, Pope said, is Agustin Roberto Salcedo, a 33-year-old El Monte educator who last winter was visiting his wife’s hometown in Mexico — Gomez Palacio, in the state of Durango, far off the beaten tourist path. On Dec. 30, Salcedo and his wife were in a local bar when unknown gunmen burst in and took him and five other men away. The six were later found dead at the edge of town.
As that case and the institute’s new state-by-state analysis both illustrate, some parts of Mexico are in big trouble that’s getting worse. But elsewhere, entire states, such as Yucatan, remain largely unaffected. The new report may help prospective travelers look more closely at parts of Mexico that they’re considering.
Because the Mexican government doesn’t make public many details of drug violence, the Trans-Border Institute — part of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego — used the pages of the Mexican newspaper Reforma as the principal source for its report, analyzing results for the first half of 2010.
Among the findings:
– Following last year’s daunting drug-violence figures in Mexico (6,587 deaths), the authors found a further surge in the first six months of this year. As the numbers grew, they found, violence increased in the already perilous states of Chihuahua (1,491 deaths) and Sinaloa (1,127),  and states including Durango (457), Tamaulipas (338), Nuevo Leon (279) and the State of Mexico (288) showed increases too.
– Nearly half of all Mexico’s drug deaths in the first half of this year (2,618 of 5,775) took place in the states of Chihuahua (which includes the infamous Ciudad Juárez and lies across the border from New Mexico and Texas) and Sinaloa (which includes Mazatlán and lies just southwest of Chihuahua, along the west coast of mainland Mexico).
– The state of Tlaxcala (Mexico’s smallest state, just east of Mexico City) recorded no drug-killings from January through June 2010, three in all of 2009 and one in all of 2008. Tlaxcala’s namesake colonial capital and pre-Columbian sites draw a trickle of international tourists. Recently, there have been reports of high-profile drug arrests and forced prostitution.
– Baja California (which includes Tijuana, Ensenada and the northern portion of the Baja peninsula) tallied 178 drug-related killings, a rate of 5.62 per 100,000 inhabitants, from January through June. That was a slight increase from the 174 such deaths in the previous six months, but much lower than the 443 drug deaths reported in the second half of 2008.
– Baja California Sur (which includes Los Cabos and La Paz) tallied 6 drug-related killings, a rate of 1.06 per 100,000 inhabitants. That January-June total was an increase for the state, where just one drug-related death was reported between January 2008 and December 2009.
– The west coast state of Jalisco (which includes Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara) tallied 205 drug-related killings, a rate of 2.92 per 100,000 inhabitants. That January-June total was a marked increase from the 126 such deaths in the previous six months and the 86 deaths in the six months before that.
– The east coast state of Quintana Roo (which includes Cancun) tallied 29 drug-related killings, a rate of 2.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. That January-June total was up from 13 in the previous six months and 14 in the six months before that.
– The west coast state of Guerrero (which includes Acapulco) tallied 434 drug-related killings, a rate of 13.81 per 100,000 inhabitants. That January-June total was up from 325 in the previous six months and 313 for the six months before that.
– The central state of Guanajuato (which includes the cities of Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende) tallied 39 drug-related killings, a rate of 0.77 per 100,000 inhabitants. That January-June total was down from 59 during the previous six months and 87 in the six months before that.
Readers should bear in mind that Reforma’s numbers are considered conservative by many. The newspaper counts 23,000 drug-related killing since the drug war began in late 2006, while the Mexican government has estimated 28,000.
As for how Mexico stacks up against the rest of Latin America, Rios pointed to a comparison compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, based on figures for all homicides (some for 2008, some for 2007, some for 2006), supplied by government agencies.
If you line up the listed Latin American countries from 1 to 20, from most violent to least, Rios noted, “Mexico is number 14,”  with 11.6 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.  Sure enough, these countries reported higher homicide rates: Paraguay, 12.2 per 100,000; Nicaragua, 13; Panama, 13.3; Suriname, 13.7; Ecuador 18.1; Guyana, 20.7; Brazil, 22; Belize, 34.3; Colombia, 38.8; Guatemala, 45.2; El Salvador 51.8; Venezuela, 52; and Honduras, 60.9.
Among countries with lower reported homicide rates were Canada, 1.7 per 100,000; Peru, 3.2; Argentina, 5.2; the U.S., 5.2; Uruguay, 5.8; Chile, 8.1; Costa Rica, 8.3; Bolivia, 10.6.
For a discussion of the U.S. State Department’s latest advice on traveling to Mexico, see Mexico’s violence: a 12-point update for travelers.
– Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times staff writer
Photo: The main square at Merida in Mexico’s relatively peaceful Yucatan state, which didn’t log any drug-related killings in 2009 or the first half of 2010, according to a recent report. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

Monday, August 2, 2010

San Ignacio




It is not always the same out here. Not by a long shot. As I've said before, when you're driving down here, it can easily change very quickly.  Consequently, you never know what's just around the next corner.





For example you could be cruising through country that looks like this, and all of a sudden here comes the oasis at SAN IGNACIO
It is so beautiful, 
and such a welcome surprise.
There's also a lot of history in this area. You'll find
Mission San Ignacio.
Mission San Ignacio was founded by the Jesuit missionary Juan Bautista de Luyando in 1728 at the site of the modern town of San Ignacio, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

"Today the venerable church stands largely in its original condition, thanks to a 1976 restoration, and is used by the local community for masses, weddings, funerals, and daily worship.  The church's elaborate facade, with its engraved stone plaques and plaster ornamentation, makes it one of the most impressive of all Baja's mission churches
Inside the church, the statue at the center of the main viceregal-style altar is of the mission's patron saint, St. Ignacius Loyola.
The Padres entrance to the mission.
And just across the street is the jardin.  A park that is the social center of the community.  Where all the in people in the know, like the two guys above, gather to catch up on "what's goin' on". 

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Time for lunch in Miraflores


It has been close to 20 years since I have been to Miraflores, population 1389.  Last time Jay and I were there, we each bought handcrafted leather belts. Still have them, although mine apparently has shrunk, as there is no way I could get it around my waist these days. In those days there were only dirt roads, very little electricity and not so much indoor plumbing.  Now all the streets are paved and have lights. Everybody has indoor plumbing and our waitress, Raquela, spent all here free time in the Picacho on  Facebook. It is absolutely everywhere down here.
The menu
The restaurant
Lovely Mamacita, Raquelas abuela?

Raquela, our waitress

By the way, Jay had vegetarian enchiladas and I had the machaca beef.  Both came with the ever present beans and rice and fresh corn tortillas.