I discovered the tip of the Baja Peninsula six years ago, when my friend steered her Jeep off the carretera, down an arroyo and right onto the sand. The ocean tinted green and blue like the Caribbean and invited us to lose our sandals. The beach stood empty. Looking around I saw the land was too; nothing but cactus all the way to the mountains. Where are the people? I wondered.
I visited again last week and found the people. In my absence the entire snout of the Baja peninsula – the area between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas known as “The Corridor” – had been colonized by hotels like the Querencia and the Westin Regina. Somebody sprinklered the desert and spawned golf courses. They paved roads for the SUVs and in the medians they planted yucca and blue fan palms, wild plants made tame.
And the concrete trucks are just revving their engines. All over Cabo San Lucas and in the smaller towns along the coast, the empty windows of half-finished cinder-block buildings stare back at you. Rebar reaches into the sky like minarets. At the new Home Depot, “Grand Opening!” banners snap in a dry wind.
Part of the appeal of Mexico is eating tacos de camaron at a roadside palapa when a rusted-out old Chevy rattles past with its tailgate fastened with baling wire and five guys standing in the back.
Now there are roadsigns reminding you that seatbelts are the law and the truck speeding by is much more likely to be a shiny and sleek Ford F-150 Lobo. Which is fitting because everyone seems to be moving just as fast as they can. Look around the traffic entering Cabo San Lucas and you see a lot less cowboy hats and a lot more button-up cubicle shirts.
Drive north from Cabo San Lucas and immediately the landscape opens to wilderness again. On the road to Pescadero, however, I passed by a gated community, or at least the shell of one; it had a gate, a street, a guard, but not a single building yet. Flags flapped above a wasteland of cactus, which made me wonder what exactly the community was gating itself against. Tarantulas, maybe?
When I come back in another six years, I am sure I will find out.
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