Along the Sea of Cortez, a down-home paradise for U.S. retirees and anglers feels the effects of development. More about RVs than high-rises, San Felipe hopes to attract with its rustic and laidback ways.

By Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 22, 2008

The battle of the beaches: Two seaside towns on the Gulf of California are tussling for tourists. Both promise sun, sand and serenity. But San Felipe is quaint. Penasco has more pizzazz. And they both want you.

San Felipe, Mexico

Rodrigo Ortega Montes was barefoot and beaming, a hammer in one hand, a bucket full of clams and sea snails in the other.

"Very rich," he said in Spanish, meaning the snails.

We were alone on the beach. When I introduced myself, Ortega told me how he had left Mazatlan, worked in California for a few years, then found his way to a construction job here. He squinted south at the blue horizon, the knife-sharp outline of a rocky hill with the sun behind it, and raised his arms.

"All this," he said, "and no migra."

Whether you're coming from the north or south -- with or without immigration officials to consider -- life can be grand in this corner of Baja California. But it is getting more complicated.

San Felipe, about 350 miles south and slightly east of Los Angeles, was founded in 1916 or 1925 (depending on who's counting) as a fishing port. Once the paved road to the U.S. border went through in the early 1950s, American anglers and adventurers started coming as well. Now a sign puts the full-time population at 19,263, though the 2005 census places the number at 14,831.

Even with no commercial flights, the town gets as many as 250,000 American and Canadian visitors yearly, many of them snowbirds in RVs who park their vehicles in dozens of campgrounds known as campos.

During spring break season -- essentially, the month of March -- the city teems with college students eager to drink legally at age 18 and line up for foam parties. (If you have to ask, you're too old.) Off-road races such as the San Felipe 250 (March 14 and 15) come up now and again.

The rule of thumb: Californians come from spring through fall, and Canadians descend in winter. And every day the sun rises over the sea and sets over the mountains.

Growth amid the rustic

Besides fishing, clamming, drinking and lounging, visitors roar through the desert on off-road vehicles of all kinds. For a day trip, many make the 55-mile paved drive to Puertecitos, a quirky American expat and retirement enclave with natural hot springs at the sea's edge.

At night, you can stroll past the row of semi-rustic restaurants and bars along the malecon. At any hour, you're likely to catch fishermen fussing with their boats. On beaches at the edge of town, you see hundreds of four-posted huts -- parking ports waiting for RVs.