The following are the introductions to various articles and news releases about Todos Santos with links to the continuation of those articles and to the original sources. These selections include articles from Los Cabos Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and USA Today. Writers Ann Hazard, David Mandich and Anna Urbanik are also featured.
Pueblos Magicos (Magical Towns) Program of SECTUR
Article by Anna Urbanik - 24 October 2006
With tourism being Mexico’s third major industry, the country’s government has developed several programs to support this important, dollar-generating sector. One of them, called Pueblos Magicos (Magical Towns), aims to increase tourism to towns that are of particular historic or religious value, or that are located near large cities or other tourist sites. As of October 23, 2006, the town of Todos Santos (about an hour drive from Cabo San Lucas or La Paz) is joining the 23 “Magical Towns” already in the program.
Continue to read the Pueblos Magicos (Magical Towns) article.
The 10th annual Todos Santos Art Festival
was held on February 3rd to February 10th 2007
Article by Karen Alvarado - January 26, 2010
Every year in early February for the past decade Todos Santos hosts its popular art festival drawing visitors from all over the world. Regional artists, musicians and filmmakers exhibit and perform in several venues all located within easy walking distance of the central plaza.
Todos Santos — Sexy Señorita of Baja California Sur
Article by Ann Hazard
Todos Santos is growing up, I say to myself as I wander the streets on a balmy afternoon in early February of last year. Like a señorita who has just celebrated her quincinera (fifteenth birthday), Baja’s hippest town is blossoming into womanhood. Her eclectic expatriate population of artists, writers, musicians and spiritual adventurers number over 600 now. Toss a few world-class surfers into the mix and things get even livelier. Because she’s more than half Mexican, Todos Santos is joyous, colorful, exotic and more than a little unpredictable. This is patently obvious to me as I tour artists’ booths, cruise in an out of galleries, chatting with the artist/owners, watch Mexican folklórico dancers perform in the square and stop in at the Caffé Todos Santos for a Pacifico and a huge serving of their 10th Anniversary Salad. Afterward I meet my husband Terry at the local sports bar, Shut Up Frank’s for a Super Bowl party.
Todos Santos – Take A Trip Into ‘The Beyond of Baja,’
For Art, Music, Fine Restaurants and the Illusionary Hotel California
By David Mandich - December 01, 2003
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.
To get there, rent a car, 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. Todos Santos article by David Mandich continues . . .
Todos Santos A Gentle Sanctuary Brimming With Creative Souls
Article from Los Cabos Magazine - Issue #7 - By: Sabrina Lear - December 15, 2000
Historic Todos Santos is an easy hour’s drive on the scenic Pacific coast highway from Cabo San Lucas. A palm-fringed oasis brimming with creative souls, this gentle sanctuary has captivated many with its peaceful, laid-back flavor. Set back several miles from the Pacific ocean and nestled under the towering Sierra de la Laguna mountains, this small, intimate town boasts chilly, enervating nights in the winter months and cooler weather than Los Cabos for much of the year. From Cabo San Lucas, Highway 19 swings uphill into town, becoming Degollado for four blocks, then turns right at the only light on Colegio Militar. To explore the “centro historico,” follow Degollado a block further, where it terminates at the main street of Calle Benito Juarez. Park in this area and wander the pueblo on foot. To the left, Juarez dead ends. In the other direction, towards the center of town, you’ll stroll up the street, passing an abandoned red brick sugar mill stack, a reminder of the town’s previous life as an affluent sugar-cane growing center.
Todos Santos, Mexico -- As soon as the plane's doors opened at San Jose del Cabo, it hit me - the iodine-tinged heat, weighted with moisture from the sea even in the Baja desert, that surprises me like a welcome-home hug every time I return to Mexico. Recently it felt sweeter than ever: After six weeks of trying to accept the new and nervous place my own country had become, Mexico was still Mexico. I'd come to the southern end of Baja California in search of something beyond tequila shooters and thumping, all-night discos - I was looking for Cabo without the Wabo. Article continues...
They may seem invisible at first, but this artsy town at the bottom of Baja is where some expats are living the good life.
By JOE CUMMINGS, Special To The Los Angeles Times
I first heard about Todos Santos more than a decade ago from my friend Rebecca. She had a gypsy soul and made her living peddling words to glossy travel magazines, a perfect mating of vocation and avocation. She once spent nine months driving the coastlines of Mexico in a beat-up Toyota Celica, a trip that yielded hundreds of pages of inspired writing about the "hidden" places she discovered. Rebecca mentioned Todos Santos to me only in passing as a place she might flee to when she was ready to write her novel. Her affection for Mexico, especially Baja, was obvious, but I wasn't immediately tempted to copy her dash across the border. Article continues ...
Hotel California: Heaven or hype as a flophouse goes upscale
By Laura Bly, USA TODAY
TODOS SANTOS, Mexico — "A dream hangs over the whole region, a brooding kind of hallucination," wrote John Steinbeck about the desert that gnaws at the edges of this scruffy but rapidly gentrifying oasis near the tip of Mexico's Baja California peninsula. "The very air here is miraculous, and outlines of reality change by the moment."
Six decades later, reality remains an ephemeral quality in Todos Santos, home to the celebrated — and reopening — Hotel California. — Or not. Article continues ...
Article from Los Cabos Magazine - Issue #4 - October 1996
Todos Santos - Another World Only an Hour Away
Only 73 kilometers (about 43 miles) north of Cabo San Lucas, yet as different as east from west, Todos Santos sits below the towering Sierra de la Laguna mountains at the end of a beautiful and scenic drive on the Pacific Ocean coast. On a mesa overlooking a valley of orchards and gardens, a mile or so from the Pacific, Todos Santos is verdant with groves of Washingtonian palms, mangos, papayas, avocados and other crops. As recently as 1990, it was a sleepier place. The chic Café Santa Fé Restaurant, in part responsible for the town's 20th century renaissance, was still under construction. Galeria Todos Santos, and the Todos Santos Inn, were distant gringo dreams. Those days saw only a smattering of artists' studios, a few seafood restaurants, and the champagne brunch at the El Molino Trailer Park was something special.ng an abandoned red brick sugar mill stack, a reminder of the town’s previous life as an affluent sugar-cane growing center.
Article from Los Cabos Magazine continues...
