Oh Mango!
If there is one fruit I love, it is mango. This south-east asian fruit is cultivated all over the tropics. The mango is an expat like me and having lunch shaded by a mango tree is my kind of paradise.
Loreto was founded by Spanish missionaries in the late 17th century. The mission is the oldest in the whole of Baja and California, and still stands today. From here the Baja and California were christianized with another 23 missions.
A small museum displays artifacts of missionary and regular life from that period to the time the cowboy was born, the Mexican rancho worker. A far cry from the myth of a blue eyed Clint-esque male keeping the West safe. Funny how that works, the myth making. We are as far away from Hollywood as can be in Loreto but the beauty of the landscape brings back pictures of Hollywood’s Wild West, until we saw the small hut, clothes and saddles of the ranch hands from the late 1900s today. Myth streamlines diversity or better suppresses it. The movies ‘Blazing saddles’ and ‘Posse’ tried to set some record straight about black cowboys but I guess the Marlboro man proof-sealed the myth.
There is a house just north of downtown Los Angeles at the Arroyo Secco, called El Alisal, built by it’s owner Charles Fletcher Lummis upon arrival from Cincinnati on foot. Offered a job at the LA Times, he decided to walk there, sent weekly accounts of his travels ahead and became it’s first editor after his 143 day long journey. He incorporated what he had seen and lived into El Alisal. He sandwiched slides of Native American and Mexican families he stayed with and the landscapes he walked through between the window glasses of his living room window. This house, full of artifacts of his travels, exudes diversity in style and design and is considred the first ‘Craftsmen’ House. Lummis, with help of friends, used only from materials found on site (more on Lummis and El Alisal here). El Alisal now features one of the few public native plant gardens in Southern California renovated and designed by one of my mentors in landscape design, the inspired Bob Perry.
The West and California looked so different then to what it looks like now and can still be found on the Baja. Here the landscape has not been overrun by imported plants. The plants are authentic and fit the land. Being on the Baja is a bit like time travel, like a visit to El Alisal. The plants on the Baja are similar to the Sonoran desert plants and different from the natives of Southern California, which get and need more rain. But the feeling is similar.
Missions had gardens in the courtyards, much like European cloisters. There were fruit trees and vegetable planters. Monks lived as expats in foreign lands and sustain themselves mostly with Native American labor. They brought with them seeds of the grains and foods they were used to in Spain. Soon those plants grew rampant and overtook the native plants, because taken out of the context of their ecosystem, the new arrivals grew unchecked. Then the Americans won the war over Mexico and took over these parts and instilled the need for a lawn. After WW2, Japanese gardeners threw plants from their native country into the mix. Another form of diversity was created, the imported plants outcompeted entirely the California native plants in the cities. The West had been finally conquered.
Baja feels still wild and untamed. The small town of Loreto is like a Spanish outpost. Narrow, cobble stone streets are set up in a grid and lined with old houses, vacant lots, a city farm, some souvenir shops and small mansions. It feels Mexican, Spanish and authentic in one, if that’s possible.
Across from the mission we found a courtyard restaurant. Edgar moved to the Baja from Mexico City, worked in restaurants in Cabo San Lucas for the past 25 years and, edged on by his friends, opened this restaurant, Mi Loreto, with his wife Norma in October 2015. They combined in the menu foods and ingredients from all regions of Mexico. They wanted to bring the tastes of Mexico to Loreto and at the same time have a peaceful time running a small restaurant. They though, but from the day they opened they are busy every night. People crave authentic and delicious food, so much so that he brought in Eufemia from Oaxaca/Southern Mexico, who makes her one-ingredient corn tacos for Edgar.
Diversity and authenticity are the spices of life. How delicious is it to end a perfect meal with slices of ripe mango spiced with sprinkles of Tajin, a unique blend of chili, lime and sea salt.
