Todos Santos is a town that attracts artists. We’d already realised this in the earlier part of our excursion that had seen us take a look at the cultural centre and nearby plazas in the town, and we’d be seeing a lot more of it as we concluded this day’s trip from Cabo San Lucas where our ship was docked.
Do you like very vibrant, abstract art? Well, if you do then you’ll like Todos Santos.
A short walk from the mission church brought us to the final stop of this cruise excursion where we’d be having lunch and this took us past some street art on the way. Not the best quality street art, admittedly, but a distinctive style that didn’t believe in subtlety of colour; a prevalent theme in the artwork in the town.
We would be having lunch in Hotel California and much was made of its connection to the song of the same name, even though there was no connection. The hotel’s original name was Hotel California which it changed, then changed back after the song’s popularity. The song was not about this hotel. Any of the half-dozen times you hear Hotel California by The Eagles playing while you’re there is purely coincidental.
It’s likely that nothing requiring courts getting involved about this situation would have happened had the hotel then not tried to trademark the name’s use in America which led to The Eagles suing to prevent this under the persuasive argument that it was heavily associated with their band by common usage. The settlement details of the case have never been made public but the hotel stopped trying to get a trademark in America although retains use of the name today in Mexico.
Because I’d been behind the main part of our tour group to take photos of the street art after everyone had passed it by and allowed clear shots, we were the last ones entering the bar and dining area where place settings had been arranged for us all to have lunch. This just left us seats at the bar rather than at tables, which we were fine with, then exceedingly happy with since the barman, having just made a margarita for a paying customer, had some left over that he put into a small shot glass and handed to my wife for free. Would it surprise you to learn that this was the absolute best margarita we’ve ever had? It was outstanding. There is something about drinking tequila in Mexico that elevates it out of sight of any competition elsewhere in the world. If we’d had more time to spend here before we needed to leave then we’d have ordered more for ourselves.
We didn’t have a huge amount of time once we’d finished our food so we made the most of it by popping into the courtyard area attached to the hotel and to the gallery of artwork there too.
The courtyard was a source of more Juan Sotomayor sculptures (we’d seen some in the plaza beforehand) and the metal elements formed into humanoid and animalistic forms with their bold, metallic paint finishes was something we really liked. Nature meets steampunk.
The art gallery was lovely and cool with some refreshing, calming colours dominating largely abstract paintings and sculptural pieces.
We bought a bottle of Hotel California-branded tequila largely because the bottle shape and stopper were fabulous. The tequila itself was okay, but absolutely not a patch on the stuff we tasted and bought years before in Puerto Vallarta that we still have some left of because we sip it only infrequently to keep the memories lasting longer.
In the next post in this Ruby Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll return to Cabo San Lucas for a fun encounter with one of the locals, and a lovely sail away from Mexico with another very interesting encounter aboard.