Santa Rosalia Baja California Mexico
5
Cruises availables
At departure or passage at this port
Frequently Asked Questions
In the small harbour basin, a few steps from the first streets. Ships calling here are generally small. It is also where the ferry linking the peninsula to Guaymas, on the mainland side of the Gulf, comes in.
Yes, all of it, in two or three unhurried hours. From the quay: the main street and the bakery, then Santa Bárbara and its quarter of wooden houses, the climb to the old mining sites, and the malecón to finish.
Because an executive of the French mining company El Boleo bought it after the 1889 Paris World's Fair. Santa Bárbara is a prefabricated galvanised iron structure designed by Eiffel in 1884 as a demountable prototype for tropical colonies, shipped over and re-erected here in 1897.
Because a French mining company built it from scratch. From 1884, El Boleo laid out the roads, erected the workshops and housed its workers in orderly districts on the mesa slope. The company name comes from the boleos, copper-rich nodules found in the surrounding hills.
A great deal, out in the open: rusted iron structures, furnaces, machines and ore carts left where they stood, as if the mine had only just closed. It gives the town a raw, almost cinematic character.
Yes, the Panadería El Boleo on the main street, which has kept a French baking tradition alive since the mining years. Locals and visitors queue together for golden baguettes and Mexican sweet breads.
More like a tropical colonial outpost than a Mexican village: wooden houses with verandas and sheet-metal roofs, several still showing their faded colours, sea green, sky blue, straw yellow.
Two or three unhurried hours on foot cover everything. It is a short call by nature and it walks well: the town is compact and everything starts at the quay.
The Mexican peso, and you need cash. Santa Rosalía is a small Baja California Sur town: cards are not accepted everywhere, notably at the bakery and in the shops along the main street.
Late afternoon on the malecón, when low light gilds the metal roofs. The Gulf sun is dry and harsh at midday: save the cool, luminous interior of Santa Bárbara for the hot hours.
