Cabo : A new beginning for Land’s End

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico —  The scene is changing at Land’s End.

As bulldozers roll across the earth, the curtain descends on an earlier time that’s impossible to replay. Not tomorrow, not ever.

In the beginning, the salvation of Cabo was its separation from civilization. It was this that drew fishermen seeking serenity and escape from the crowds. A thousand miles below the U.S. border, Cabo San Lucas was caught in a time warp.

For centuries it dozed . . . until a new highway and the jet airplane laid waste to a dream. Now, developers are predicting that Cabo soon will be even busier than Cancun.

I recall once when you could catch a wink in Cabo for $5 a night, swill beer in a cantina with no stools and flag a ride with Luis Raul, who steered the town’s only taxi, a weary ’37 Ford sedan with bashed-in fenders, worn-out shocks and a muffler that showered more sparks than a runaway rocket.

Raul’s rig bounced like a pogo stick--not only because of the bad shocks but also because of potholes that had to be dodged in the unpaved road. Chickens squawked and flapped their wings, racing frantically in an effort to outdistance Raul’s old heap.

Sometimes the chickens invaded the cantina, with its dirt floor and vintage jukebox that wheezed with melodies of the ‘40s while the proprietor prepared tacos over a makeshift hibachi whose aroma was downright seductive.

There was another bar with a donkey for a mascot, fold-up tables and a kerosene lantern that swung from the ceiling. This cantina also had a dirt floor and a jukebox. Only thing was, the jukebox was broken, so an old Mexican with watery eyes, gray hair and a huge smile entertained on the guitar.

Because there was no road to Cabo--only the one through town--fishermen arrived in private airplanes. Or else they sailed down on yachts from La Paz and San Diego. Celebrities joined them. Bing Crosby, John Wayne, Dwight Eisenhower.

Finally, in the late ‘50s, the hacienda-like Hotel Palmilla took shape on a bluff overlooking a two-mile stretch of beach, and this was the beginning. In those days Cabo was utopia for Crosby and the others. Even the locals were content. The sea supplied all the fish they could eat, the sunsets were glorious and stars dangled in the darkness like pendants.

I saw Raul the other day. His hair is white, and in place of the vintage Ford he drives a nearly new Toyota, but it isn’t the same. Although he earns more pesos than he did before, he speaks nostalgically of early Cabo.

“Life was simpler,” he said as other taxis sped south along the highway from the new airport. The old cantinas with the dirt floors are gone. In their place, vacationers swill beer and margaritas at the Giggling Marlin, a restaurant-bar with recorded rock rather than mariachis.

Elsewhere, crowds spill out of El Squid Row and El Faro Viejo and Estela’s by the Sea, and one is lucky to get a table at Candido’s, which occupies a stucco building with a thatch roof on the approach to town.

At one time Candido’s was going to be a furniture store. Then the owner, Enrique Gamboa, said to his friend, Candido Garcia, “Candido, this place looks more like a restaurant,” and Candido said, “Yeah, I think you’re right, Enrique.”

So they tossed out the furniture and put in a kitchen and a bar, and soon Candido’s was as crowded as Rick’s joint in the film “Casablanca.” The fact of the matter is, it could double for Rick’s, what with its rattan furniture and potted palms and candlelight. Every time I go to Candido’s my imagination slips into high gear and I keep hearing Ingrid Bergman whisper, “Play it, Sam.”

Besides the restaurant, Candido Garcia operates the hugely successful Twin Dolphin resort at the foot of the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains, between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. With 56 low-rise rooms that face the sea, the Twin Dolphin appears like some Moorish village strung along Portugal’s Algarve, or one of those beach resorts on the island of Mykonos.

Boasting no telephones, no radios and no TV, the Twin Dolphin bills itself as a hideaway for celebrities. Against a backdrop of desert wilderness, it features a hiking-jogging trail, tennis and a fleet of deep-sea fishing boats in a setting as peaceful as the scene on a South Seas poster. Candies left on pillows say “Sweet Dreams,” and bedtime melodies are provided by the wash of the ocean.

Along with the Twin Dolphin, the Hotel Palmilla and Hotel Cabo San Lucas represent Cabo’s luxury resorts. Recently renovated, the 71-room Palmilla in San Jose del Cabo is like stepping through the door of a magnificent old hacienda. Couples wed in its chapel can honeymoon in villas with tiled floors, lofty ceilings and stunning views of the Sea of Cortez.

A fountain spills musically at the entrance, and amber lamps glow in the gathering darkness. In the lounge, guests study the sea while musicians play for diners in the hotel’s candle-lit restaurant.

Cabo pioneer Bud Parr still reigns over the venerable Hotel Cabo San Lucas, with its lush gardens and an outdoor dining terrace that faces the horizon and the flaming sunsets. Arriving in Cabo in the ‘50s, the ex-Californian stayed on to become a legend, building his hotel by producing his own concrete blocks and tile, a story he never tires of retelling.

Parr hired artisans to fashion furniture and turned the desert green with trees shipped from California, Mexico City and Todos Santos. In the process he began turning out plywood, which got him into a confrontation recently with Candido Garcia. Self-made and tough, Parr is unbending. So when Garcia came begging for plywood, Parr stubbornly refused.

“Two things I don’t give away,” Parr said, “are cement and plywood.”

Garcia pleaded. “Never?”

“Never.”

“But, Bud, everyone says you’re a charitable man.”

“No plywood. I don’t give it away, I don’t sell it. It’s my policy.”

Garcia pleaded again. Parr said no.

In the afternoon Garcia returned. “Bud, about the plywood. . . .”

The big man grew impatient. “I said no.”

Garcia argued. “Please.”

“Candido, why in hell do you need plywood?”

“I told you, Bud, it’s for charity.”

“Charity?”

“The church, they need plywood. It’s for El Cid Catholic Church.”

Parr threw up his hands. “Why the devil didn’t you say so in the first place, Candido?”

“I tried. . . .”

Parr gestured to an assistant. “Give Candido all the plywood he wants.”

In this bone-dry desert, Parr dug wells, put in a generating plant and laid out an airstrip so that guests could land their private planes. Nearing 80, he’s still turning out concrete blocks, plywood and furniture.

Nine years ago Parr bought the Hacienda Hotel in downtown Cabo San Lucas, adding three wings, a dining room and a cocktail lounge. After this he broadcast the word that his hotel faced the only safe beach in the village of Cabo San Lucas. It is no exaggeration.

Nearby, the Hotel Finisterra faces the Beach of Death, a name relating to the chilling story of swimmers who’ve been swept to sea by riptides and a powerful and unforgiving undertow. At Hotel Hacienda, Parr provides scuba and snorkeling instruction, rents out windsurfing rigs and delivers couples by boat to remote Lover’s Beach at Land’s End, returning at sunset to fetch them back to the hotel.

For a handsome fee, Parr puts up vacationers in the private homes he maintains between Hotel Cabo San Lucas and the Hacienda. One casa with six bedrooms, eight baths and a private swimming pool overlooking Chilino Bay fetches $1,000 a day.

A two-bedroom casa at Santa Maria Bay rents for $350 a day, and there’s a four-bedroom beach house with an asking price of $500 a day in that burgeoning residential area known as Los Cabos between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas.

Coming to Cabo are Hyatt, Sheraton and a Marriott. By 1990 the room count at Cabo is expected to reach 4,000, and by the year 2000 Cabo, with its magnificent beaches, expects to welcome one million visitors a year.

Cabo’s small-town charms are falling prey to developers who disregard any semblance of architectural harmony. If a uniform code exists, they ignore it. An outrageous concrete high-rise is nearing

completion near the new Hotel Melia with its window on Lover’s Beach. In contrast, there’s Club Cascadas de Baja with its thatch-roof bungalows and individual swimming pools, a complex the developers describe as “fantasy island.”

Overlooking the scene are luxury homes that sell for up to $5 million apiece. Once Cabo’s lure was fishing. Now it’s the weather, too. With little humidity and loads of sunshine, the resort at Land’s End draws increasing crowds.

North of Cabo San Lucas the Mexican government continues to develop the new resort community of San Jose del Cabo, and while it lacks the tackiness of Cabo San Lucas, it also lacks Cabo’s character.

On the other hand, restaurant Damiana occupies an ancient adobe with tables scattered through the garden and great bursts of bougainvillea. Down the street, Pancho and Lefty’s turns out Mexican fare beneath a huge palapa facing the park.

The place Mexico calls Land’s End, at the tip of Baja, is a curious destination. Between Tijuana and Cabo the highway twists through lifeless mountains and valleys and beaches that are both forbidding and unforgiving. Dust devils spin furiously across the lonely desert, and whitecaps break along the shore of the Sea of Cortez while vultures wheel overhead.

Finally, the road leads to Cabo, where Luis Raul drives his new Toyota and dreams of peaceful days when he steered a vintage Ford over potholes while music blared from the old cantina and chickens roosted on the bar.

Hotel Palmilla: $200 to $260 double; call toll-free (800) 542-6082 (California), (800) 854-2608 (outside California).

Twin Dolphin: $225 double; call (213) 386-3940 or (800) 421-8925 (outside California).

Hotel Cabo San Lucas: Rates per person per night, $55; junior suite, $59; master suite, $80; call (213) 205-0055 or (800) 282-4809 (California), (800) 421-0777 (outside California).

Hacienda Hotel: Rates from $35 per person double; phone (213) 205-0015 or (213) 205-0055, (800) 282-4809 (California), (800) 421-0777 or (800) 421-0645 (outside California).

Hotel Melia: Rates from $100 double; call (305) 854-0990.

Club Cascades de Baja: Rates $100 to $375 per unit per night; phone (714) 640-1902.

For more information on travel to Mexico, contact the Mexican Government Tourism Office, 10100 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 224, Los Angeles 90067, (213) 203-8191.