“The landscape looks like nothing,” says our guide Victor as we drive from the airport to Loreto Baja California Sur, “but there are owls and woodpeckers in those cactus, and big horn sheep, grey foxes, mule deer, raccoons and mountain lions in the arroyos, the valleys.” The green and gold mounded hills studded with lanky cardon cactus, copal bushes and prickly chain link cholla seem as static as a western movie set to my untrained eyes. The town of Loreto, and the surrounding towns of Baja California Sur have their own surprises and I was more than ready to savor them all.
Best Things to do in Loreto – Baja California Sur
At least I had a guide. In 1697, when Jesuit priests arrived in Baja California Sur, they had high hopes, no money, and a pledge to build a Camino Real, a Royal Road, for the King of Spain. The first mission they built was the Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó in the center of what would become the town of Loreto. This beautifully restored stone church near the town square still welcomes worshippers today. Its bells ring out on the hour. For a town of 15,000 souls the church is a busy place. Celebrations and services are held every day and continue into the evening when the lights from the church spill out into the street. A museum of early artifacts stands on the church grounds along with a tiny gift shop selling delicately crafted religious souvenirs. This was the first of the missions that stretch from Baja California Sur across the border to San Francisco, 1400 miles away, along the Camino Real.
Of course, the Jesuits were not the first people to live in Loreto. They were met by the Monqui the indigenous people of Baja California Sur who had lived there for thousands of years and were very happy with their nomadic lifestyle and polygamous culture. The Monqui were conscripted into building the missions by the Jesuits who offered them a reliable source of food and the promise of salvation, but in less than one hundred years their small population was decimated by European diseases. Their culture remains in the form of petroglyphs and pictographs at several sites around Loreto. The two sites closest to town are at Cuevas Pintas, 15 km to the west and La Pingüica, 60 km to the north.
Many tour companies in town organize tours to the sites. On my first day in Loreto I took the one hour drive and two hour hike to see the pictographs and petroglyphs at La Pingüica with Juve Orozco from Sea and Land…
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