Pictorial: Beneath the Sea of Cortes

Welcome to the Sea of Cortes

Once Spanish galleons sailed these waters, and armor-clad conquistadors marched along the sandy shores. Today, the Sea of Cortes is touted as the Mediterranean of the New World-destination of jet-setters and weekend campers alike, attracted by its infinite shades of blue, its limitless varieties of life beneath the gentle waves, its striking scenes of white-capped aqua colliding with the desert tans and purples of windand water-tortured rocks.

Visitors come here by the thousands, mostly for the fun of it-the swimming, sunbathing, sailing, skiing, and outrageously successful fishing. They come back, again and again, for all of the above and for close-up contact with the fascinating folkways of Mexico.

The Sea of Cortes, or Gulf of California, begins 63 miles south of Arizona in Sonora, Mexico. It ends 700 miles away, a bit below the Tropic of Cancer, where the massive waves of the Pacific Ocean crash into the spectacular natural stone arches that mark the very end of Baja California.

Between the cliffs of Cabo San Lucas and the tidal flats of El Golfo de Santa Clara, where the Colorado River dribbles in, lie long stretches of unspoiled beaches and occasional coves where pirates lurked awaiting treasure ships. The charming villages are redolent of times gone by; and luxury resorts with their bougainvillea bordered swimming pools, lighted tennis courts, and surfside palapas those over-sized palm-frond parasols-provide pampered escapism at prices that are well within the reach of most norteamericano travelers.

Among the youngest of seas, geologi-cally speaking, this one evolved 10 to 15 million years ago, a child of the San Andreas Fault. Volcanic swells followed by long tears in the earth's surface split Baja California from mainland Mexico. After a time, the Pacific Ocean poured into the abyss to create this subsidiary sea.

The bordering land is severe. As one travels southward, Sonoran Desert trans-forms into tropical scrub along the eastern shore as Mazatlan comes into sight; to the west, rocky outcrops, wondrous marsh-land plant life, and Arabian Nights oases characterize the legendary Baja.

The 50 to 100-mile expanse of water between the Mexican mainland and the Baja California peninsula is calm and peaceful-most of the time and in most places-except for the rare tidal waves sent northward from the volcanic belt running along Mexico's midsection and west of the Michoacan shoreline.

The sea's benign nature, however, can create a false sense of security, so it's smart to treat it as something more volatile than the lake it appears to be.

But for the conquistadors of the 16th century, this sheltered body of water was indeed smooth sailing after the challenges of the Atlantic Ocean. Cortes himself ventured forth from Mexico City to sail the sea in 1535. Landing at La Paz, his men found some of the translucent "black pearls" for which the port became famous. Returning to the capital, Cortes sent out several expeditions to learn more about the strange lands west of the wellexplored Sinaloan shores.

In 1539, Francisco de Ulloa sailed out of Acapulco with three ships. Skirting the shore, he reached the mouth of the Colorado River; then heading southward, he sailed the Baja shore to the Pacific. He next coursed northward halfway up the peninsula to Magdalena Bay before returning to the relative safety of New Spain's Pacific ports.

It was Ulloa who labeled the great gulf a sea, naming it El Mar de Cortes. Most later map makers, however, chose to call it the Gulf of California. The land bordering the blue waters was hot and dry, its plant life was strange even by desert standards, and its inhabitants were warlike in the face of Iberian arrogance.

Although La Paz provided pearls for the crowned heads of Europe, the treasures this land eventually surrendered actually were very modest. The only wealth witnessed in any real amount merely traversed the southern end of the sea when the Manila galleons stopped for refitting at Cabo San Lucas on the way to Acapulco from the Philippines, loaded to the gunnels with silks, spices, and jewelry.

Of course, where there was wealth, there were pirates. Thomas Cavendish captured the galleon Santa Ana in 1587 at Cabo San Lucas. One of his ships, its crew, and half of the Santa Ana booty later disappeared and were never heard of again. They may still lie beneath the waves along the Baja shore, and so may many other treasures.

Since greater wealth lay elsewhere in the New World, the Sea of Cortes was virtually ignored by the treasure seekers for several centuries.

But here also were Indians to be Christianized. In 1683, Admiral Isidro Atondo sailed the Sea of Cortes. Among his passengers was the energetic priest Eusebio Francisco Kino, who would construct a string of missions on the Sonoran shores of the sea after preliminary work in the Baja. In time his zeal for saving souls would have him establishing missions as far north as Arizona.

Sea of Cortes

Despite the severity of hacking out an existence on the frontier, the holy fathers kept their settlements alive until towns spread out around them, where people were able to scratch out small farms or dig for minerals.

It was a poor land, yet political leaders in Mexico City and elsewhere continued to dream of rich mineral strikes, a possibility that made this remote country so curiously attractive to foreigners.

When the United States and Mexico went to war in 1846, Yankee troops occupied La Paz and Cabo San Lucas. After peace came in 1848, Baja California might have become part of the United States: American diplomats had their eye on Baja during negotiations leading to the Gadsden Purchase that filled out Arizona in 1854. But they were thwarted by an American who wouldn't wait for diplomacy to take its course. The impatient gringo was none other than the self-styled "man of destiny," William Walker.

This soldier of fortune left California in 1853 with an eye to conquering Sonora and Baja. Entering the southern sea in the brig Caroline, he prepared to strike for Guaymas, but then thought better of it and conquered La Paz instead, proclaiming an "independent" Republic of Lower California.

It lasted less than a month. The Mexican forces rallied and drove him back to California, where he next plotted the takeover of Sonora by launching an overland attack. It foundered in the desert. Again Walker retreated, later becoming the stuff of legends with his conquest of Nicaragua. He died in 1860 in front of a Central American firing squad.

Meanwhile, other foreign eyes were cast on the Sonoran side of the sea. Count Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon, a dashing French wastrel drawn to California by the gold rush, raised an army in San Francisco under the pretext of protecting Mexico's northern frontier against Apache raiders and gringo filibusters. Raousset, his French henchmen, and assorted foreign adventurers confounded their Sonoran hosts, posing as saviors of Mexican sovereignty while prospecting for minerals for a company bent on exploiting whatever was exploitable between the Sierra Madre and the sea. The bizarre career of the "Sultan of Sonora" came to an end when he was defeated in battle By Jose Maria Yañez at Guaymas on July 13, 1854. Raousset-Boulbon was executed a month later. Today, most foreigners sailing into Guaymas have only pleasure cruising in mind, and they're a welcome lot. Marinas at San Carlos and other spots offer excellent shelter for yachts and cabin cruisers, while lightweight catamarans skitter across Bacochibampo-the Bay of Serpents in Indian lore-an aquatic playground flanked by resort hotels, motels, campgrounds, and condominiums. Here, a fiveto six-hour drive from Nogales, is the focal point of Sonora's tourist industry. Under a trust-deed law drawn during the early 1970s, hundreds

Sea of Cortes

Towns is a port-to-port passenger-ship network. From Guaymas' terminal, cars and people can cross to Santa Rosalia. Other ferries link La Paz with Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas with Puerto Vallarta.

Los Mochis is the western terminus of the Chihuahua-Pacific Railway, which runs through Mexico's spectacular Barranca del Cobre. Besides passenger cars and selfpropelled autovias, the route offers automobile-carrying cars. (There's no highway through the barranca. Besides, who would want to drive through such breathtaking countryside?) Between Los Mochis and Guaymas lies the Sonoran side-trip to beat all side-trips: Alamos.

Located 30 miles inland from Navojoa, itself 17 miles from the beach, Alamos is a colonial jewel set amid the foothills of the Sierra Madre. A long-somnolent city originally built on silver mining, it has been restored to the glory of its bonanza days by visionary North Americans.

For most visitors, though, Sonora's greatest attraction is the Sea of Cortes. Puerto Peñasco, Kino Bay, and San Carlos offer endless water sports, splendid seafood, and exotic shopping-all with a distinctive dash of Mexican culture. There's that delightful unhurried pace that allows friends and strangers, guests and hosts, buyers and sellers to chat aimlessly before getting down to business-if they ever do. And, of course, there's the exhilarating music, in great variety but always with an unmistakable Mexican beat.

The seafood deserves special mention, especially its most magnificent forms: buachinango (snapper) Veracruz style; shrimp al mojo de ajo (butterflied and broiled in garlic and butter); swordfish steak, corvina, cabrilla. Caramba!

And the people. Although tourists tend to bring out the curio-dealer mentality in most places, there seems to be little of that along the Sea of Cortes. In fact, the Seri Indian woman at Kino Bay might not sell you her hand-carved ironwood owl, shark, or roadrunner if you appear overanxious. Her wares are to be mulled over, fussed about, appreciated, and admired-then bargained for in dignified fashion.

Occupying these shores are genuinely friendly folks anxious to help you along your way and, perhaps, even eager to try out some English while you work on your Spanish with them.

Their hospitality combines with the beauty of the seaside to distract you from whatever cares you left behind. It's all part of the spell cast by the Sea of Cortes.

Of North American investors now live or vacation in beach retreats that would be beyond their budgets anywhere on the California coast.

At Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point), Kino Bay, and Guaymas, houses reminiscent of the Spanish Costa del Sol have been springing up for the better part of two decades: weekend retreats for Arizonans, winter-season and retirement homes for people from all over the United States.

The exciting surroundings encourage deep-sea fishing, surf casting, snorkeling, and scuba diving; sailboarding, boating, water-skiing, ski-scooting, and tubing, as well as jogging along the beach. Kite flying, too, reaches new heights along these shores, where steady breezes blow during much of the year.

Old hands in the beach towns find shopping for groceries part of the fun, too. Besides the fiery salsas and exotic canned vegetables and fruits found on the supermarket shelves, there's a vast variety of seafood. Shrimp-giants fresh from the sea-are available at much less than U.S. prices, and the same is true of other catches from the bountiful waters. Arizonans often bring along ice chests and fill them with prawns packed in ice for the trip home. Their own catches, too, can be cleaned and packed at modest rates.

Linking many of the burgeoning resort