We’d cruised past Cabo San Lucas in March 2019 on our second Star Princess cruise (that’s the best Star Princess, not to be confused with the more-recently-built behemoth) and been able to spot its famous arched rock formation from a distance so when we had a chance to actually visit the Mexican port and see that formation up close during our 2023 Ruby Princess cruise we… didn’t. We took one look at the local options – visit some overcrowded shops or visit some overcrowded beach somewhere – and booked a trip instead.
Our excursion at Cabo San Lucas took us about seventy kilometres north to the town of Todos Santos and because you’re the sort of person who can read titles on websites and comprehend the meaning conveyed this won’t be news to you. You possibly even searched for details of the cruise excursion that includes a visit to this town in Mexico and its famous tourist attraction, Hotel California. In this first post about our single day on this cruise anchored off Mexico I’ll go through some of the elements of the town we saw on a guided walking tour.
Our tour began at the Professor Néstor Agúndez Martínez Cultural House.
The professor was a poet, choreographer, composer, and theatre director, and this building was inaugurated in the late 1970s to preserve and promote local art, history, and traditions of Todos Santos. Our guide took us through the large, spacious gallery rooms, pointing out some of the more noteworthy pieces of art, and I particularly liked the old photographs and portraits of local men and women. The building was well-designed with its high spaces and thick walls to feel cool too, despite the high heat outside.
Anyone who’s read other travelogues on this website may know that I’ve a thing for architecture so the next part of the tour that walked us past some typical houses for the area was a delight. None of these buildings were significant in any way but there were touches of Art Deco lines and colours in places and a lovely familiarity that comes from seeing buildings like this on television and in movies. It didn’t hurt that the sky was a cloudless, deep, vibrant blue that just made every other colour just pop.
Our guide was keen to point out the local flora for those unfamiliar with cacti in particular. It actually was interesting for us to see plants like on pavements beside parked cars rather than somewhere out in a more desert-type landscape.
Our short walk from the cultural centre brought our group to the Plaza del Pueblo, beside another small square, the Plaza del Beso. Both were charming little public spaces with some nice public artwork and I was particularly impressed by the colourful sculptures made from junk. These were pieces by a local sculptor called Juan Sotomayor and we would end up seeing an awful lot more of his art pieces a little later in the day here in Todos Santos.
The purpose of the visit to these town squares was to visit the Misión Santa Rosa de las Palmas (it’s known by a few names). The mission church was the first European settlement in Todos Santos, founded in 1733 by Jesuits. Native people were the mission’s congregation and attempts to convert them to Christianity and turn them into farm workers was constantly upset by European diseases decimating the local population and some of the local tribes deciding that coerced conversion and disease-driven eradication and the kidnapping of natives’ children as hostages required a violent response. Seems fair to me too.
Unlike the cultural centre which had been delightfully cool, the church was stifling so I spent most of it outside, waiting for the guide to finish talking about the building’s history and admiring the vivid colours around the area instead.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll move onto the next part of our day’s excursion in Todos Santos which sees us paying a visit to the Hotel California for some lunch and a lot more artwork.