Tourists who aren’t into the Cabo San Lucas scene of catching a big fish, playing golf or getting drunk and hanging upside down by their ankles on a fish scale in a bar are happy to discover the sleepy ‘Artists Colony’ of Todos Santos just one hour north of Cabo San Lucas on the Pacific side of the Baja California peninsula. What was once Santa Fe, New Mexico in the 1920´s, later Carmel and Big Sur in the 50´s & 60´s, is now becoming Todos Santos. Whatever that is … or whatever you want it to be.

Take the two-lane highway out of Cabo San Lucas, and get prepared to enjoy one of the most spectacular scenic drives to be found anywhere. You will cross over grand arroyos, look down on Pacific coast beaches, off which you may see migrating whales spouting or manta rays the size of baby grand pianos belly flopping. The road meanders up and down hills and across coastal plains covered with thorn-tropical vegetation.

At the end of the fall rainy season the desert blooms with bougainvilleas, many varieties of flowering cacti, bushes, trees and millions of butterflies. On a recent trip I estimated one butterfly per cubic meter of airspace over the highway. Upon arrival in Todos Santos the front end of my vehicle looked like a psychedelic art piece. “What a waste”, I thought, as I gazed at what appeared to be a butterfly salad tossed at my windshield and radiator grill.

In Todos Santos one can stroll paved (and dirt) colonial era streets of a peaceful village where one will find more art galleries than taco stands. Here you won’t have to fend off Time Share sales people, or ‘street peddlers’ who in Cabo San Lucas, seem to leap out at you from behind every bush and rock.

Missionaries settled Todos Santos during the colonial era, built a church, and began crop production to supply La Paz, fifty miles to the East. By ox-drawn wagon cart. A natural spring-fed river flows through the town center irrigating crops, supplying homes and businesses, and then into the sea.

Todos Santos, is an oasis and micro-climate, always ten to fifteen degrees cooler than the rest of Los Cabos. In recent times, it has become an escape for American and Canadian artists, writers and musicians seeking creative space and tranquility as well as art lovers from the world over seeking affordable fine art.

Over the past two centuries, the town slowly grew and even had a bit of a flowering in the early part of the last century when sugar production brought fortune to the town enabling it to build a regional stage theater, baseball and aquatic stadiums and a new church the size of a small cathedral. Imagine … all these big city amenities in a little village farm town of a few thousand souls!

In the middle of the last century as sugar prices fell, so did the fortune of Todos Santos. The town went to sleep (rolled over and nearly died …) for almost fifty years. The sugar mills became ruins, houses were abandoned and civic monuments like the theater and aquatic stadium began to crumble.

But the locals hung on; fishing, farming, going to church and praying. The truth, is that the women and children go to church, while the men spend their time from Friday to Monday - playing or watching sports. Or standing around a pickup truck under a tree drinking beer.

With the completion of the two-lane highway, connecting the village with La Paz and Los Cabos, civilization is now only an hour away in either direction. Before the highway, it was a ten to twelve hour teeth rattling drive in an old farm truck on a frequently washed out dirt road. Five or six days by ox cart before that.

On the weird side … many folks in days prior to the highway, had lived their entire lives in Todos Santos without once visiting the “big cities,” a killer days drive away. Having lived without TV, radio or a newspaper, the locals “missed” WW1, WW2, the Vietnam War, and everything in between. Whether they missed anything worth missing is debatable, but any discussion of history with a local, is bound to be an unrewarding one-sided exercise in futility.

One could surmise that little has appeared on the radar screens of the locals since Cortez set foot in La Paz nearly five hundred years ago looking for pearls and a mythical tribe of gorgeous Amazon-like warrior women. He found pearls and plenty of trouble with the local natives. Early on, in Todos Santos there were some skirmishes with the natives ending in the deaths of some of the missionaries who opposed their polygamy and ‘clothes optional’ way of life.

Later there was the Mexican revolution of 1910, which caused a bit of a stir. La Coronela, a woman Mexican revolutionary born in Todos Santos, lead armed soldiers into battle. A gallery located in her birthplace now shows contemporary art. Old locals say she was a drunk who hung out in the cantinas with the soldiers.

But overall, little changed until the completion of the Transpeninsular highway thirty years ago. Beginning in Tijuana it rolls almost one thousand miles all the way to Los Cabos from the US/Mexican border. And it was on this long, lonesome, desert highway, that artist Charles Stewart and his Cherokee Indian wife Mary Ann, rolled into town some twenty years ago seeking peace and refuge from the exploding tourist art communities of Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico.

Stewart, now in his eighties, paints dreamy paintings loaded with American Indian symbology heavily influenced by the surrealist movement of the 40’s. You can visit the Stewart gallery and residence a short block down the street behind the bank on Juarez Street. Their house is an interesting abode in “French Baja Colonial style.” It’s basically a four-room box with a hall down the middle with a covered veranda on all four sides. Stewart hangs his paintings on the exterior walls all around the house and inside on the central hallway walls. Get Stewart talking and he’ll tell you stories of how he was one of General Patton’s tank boys in the ‘Big War.’

Other artists, writers, musicians, masseuses, surfers, yogis, vegans, psychologists, psychos, and assorted not-so-creative types but wanting-to-be, all followed the slow southerly whale migration to Baja California Sur (BCS) and Todos Santos. But lacking the instinct (or intelligence) of whales and returning north after a season, many stayed, seeing Baja California Sur and Todos Santos specifically, as a drift backwards in time … to San Diego two hundred years ago perhaps.

There are over a dozen galleries in Todos Santos with offerings ranging from photography, stained glass, Plein Aire landscapes, streetscapes, seascapes, cowscapes and chicken crossings. There’s a faux Van Gogh impressionist artist (will she ever cut off her ear?) and a score of painters who excel at painted copies of photographs of Mexicans standing in Chile fields leaning on a hoe or washing their laundry in a stream.

But Santa Fe is still Mecca for people seeking Art. For where once upon a time Santa Fe was a village like Todos Santos, Santa Fe is now a town of sixty-two thousand souls with over four hundred galleries! Filled with enough faux Fauvists, Looney Tunes Impressionists, Indian, mountain, cowboy, horse, barn and chicken art to choke on. And it’s all coming soon to a gallery near you in Todos Santos as new galleries open each season.

Rents are increasing in direct proportion with the numbers of bored fifty- year- old ex-pat Gringos opening T-shirt, trinket, and latte’ tiendas. One imaginative Gringo recently opened a Mexican Restaurant. Local Mexicans say they’ve never tasted anything like it … Being eternally short of dinero, locals generally dine at the hot dog or taco carts on regional favorites such as tacos filled with fish, shrimp, chopped steak, cow’s brains (or eyes), goat, cactus and crickets. Tourists generally opt for more mundane fare in sit-down dining establishments.

Some restaurants have been given rave reviews by New York Times Food Critics further adding to the mystique of the town. Not-to-be-missed is the Los Adobes Restaurant which features continental food with a Baja twist. The Santa Fe Restaurant is good for northern Italian cuisine, and the newly renovated Hotel California Restaurant offers a bit of both.

A favorite haunt for locals is the Cerritos Beach club just outside the chile farm village of Pescadero. The palapa and wood structure features comfy stuffed chaise chairs, umbrellas and tables on the each where you can wriggle your toes in the sand while enjoying the point surf break. Antique Harleys grace the dining rooms.

Besides lots of fine and lots of not-so-fine art, great food and the mellow yellow of a Mexican town that time almost forgot, other reasons for visiting Todos Santos include: great surfing nearby, horseback riding down dusty paths, past farms, cacti and casitas, fishing from the beach or from a panga, and exploring the colonial brick town with its numerous shops, boutiques, galleries, restaurants and cantinas.

The legendary Hotel California is known throughout the world as the hotel the Eagles Band made famous. It best exemplifies the dream and mystique of Todos Santos. The band never stayed there. But each year, thousands of tourists visit and pay their respects wanting to believe the band slept there … in room number fourteen, according to one Japanese guidebook. Never mind there are only eleven rooms. People pose for photos in front of the joint, buy T-shirts and other souvenirs all believing the famous song ‘Hotel California’ was about this place in far away Baja California. And then they beg to see room number fourteen.

To clear the air on the debate, I queried the hotel owner who assured me live and in person, in front of a witness, and looking me straight in the eye … “The Eagles NEVER STAYED at the Hotel California.” But I believe they did. I have faith. And I believe they found Elvis there; and Janis Joplin too. And I believe Jacko may have dangled his kid (or something else) out the balcony window there as well.

So, as Bob Dylan once sang: “You’ve got to believe in something.” I believe, “It’s getting too dark to see, and I can’t take it anymore,” so I’ll just walk down that lonesome desert highway to the bar in Hotel California, order drinks and watch the sunset with my wife. Then … I’ll take her home and paint her.