Taking a dirt road to reach solitude
MULEGÉ, Mexico — As my traveling companions and I were planning our visit to the Kuyimá whale camp in Baja California, we agreed that three days in Mexico weren’t enough.
Our flight home would allow us to spend four more days in Mexico — but where?
We wanted to a spend a couple of nights in the middle of (almost) nowhere, and Mulegé, a town about two hours north of Loreto, seemed like a good choice. Google led us to the Playa Frambes Lighthouse Resort, about a 15-minute drive south of town.
“Resort” wasn’t the first word that came to mind as we approached it on a dirt road through cactus fields, but the hotel does have a beach, a lighthouse (with two sleeping areas) and a beautiful view of the Bay of Conception.
The property also includes three detached suites and a kitchen/dining room. Each suite has a sitting room, a bathroom and two bedrooms.
What they do not have are walls that connect with the roof. There’s a 2- or 3-foot gap throughout, which was cause for some dismay among the travelers who shared the building.
Breakfast is included at Playa Frambes, but the kitchen closes after that, which meant we were on our own for lunch and dinner.
In a “what-to-do notebook” (provided in each suite) we read about Juan Carlos Osuna Ortiz and his El Burro Baja Tours and agreed to meet him the next morning for a four-hour boat ride that would include lunch.
The Bay of Conception was calm as we motored into miniature inlets and around tiny islands too small and rocky for anything but birds and sea lions. We encountered no other humans, making do with cormorants, gulls, rays, frigate birds, blue-footed boobies and a sleek whale shark, about 20 feet long, swimming lazily in a cove.
Some of us went snorkeling while Juan Carlos donned a wetsuit and went in search of clams, scallops and fish that he reeled in a few minutes later.
Our next stop was a slip of a beach on another tiny island where we pushed the boat onto the sand and Juan Carlos started to prepare the first course.
He carved the scallops into thin slices and served them raw with lime juice and slivers of red onion. The clams were next; we consumed some of them raw, served in their gleaming brown shells. Then he cooked the rest of the mollusks with the fish, onions and peppers on a tiny grill that he had wedged in the cleft of a large rock.
This last course was also served on clam shells, and we left with a new understanding of what a small-plates menu can and should be.