Festival Antigua California

24/02/2024

CHUBASCO!

That was the word that jumped out at me from the pages of Ray Cannon's book "The Sea of Cortez", and imprinted itself in my ten year old mind as a new favorite word when I read it for the first time in 1966. It described a hurricane-like wind coming off the Sea of Cortez in summer, and stirred my boyish imagination of such a storm in such an exotic place like Baja. WowI I loved the word, if such a thing like a word can be loved and stayed fascinated by it for years.

I have only a vague idea of how or why an exotic word becomes interesting to any of us, but can extend this lack of clarity to many of my favorite things and simply don't care to be reductionist about them. It may all be unknowable anyway, but just in case it isn't, please do not enlighten me! A little self imposed ignorance is pardonable sometimes.... Little did I know that one word would manifest in two big ways in my life! Chubasco!

The first such occurrence was a restaurant in Park City, Utah. I had decided that there must be others who, like myself, liked authentic Mexican food, and had their own favorite places to frequent back where they came from and that this cuisine was not always available in my adopted state of Utah. I mean yeah, there were imposters offering a very Americanized version of Mexican food with nearly every plate usually smothered in melted cheese, but it just didn't compare to Juanitas (Coast Highway in Encinitas, California) or El Indio (near Old Town San Diego). So, I founded this Mexican restaurant and named it El Chubasco! I had regurgitated Ray Cannon's influence and outed my word to all. (link is below)

But now for the wild time that I was caught in a real Chubasco, circa 2009. Here in Loreto, I had chartered a panga captained by an old, weathered fisherman in his 70's to go fishing alone one June day at the marina in town. As we motored out of Loreto's port and headed North at a good clip, the weather was clear and a bit warm and windless and the Sea was flat like a glassy mirror, a perfect day to catch dorado. We had barely arrived to our first stop about 6 miles Northeast of Coronado Island where we spotted some dorado jumping around a kelp paddy. We weren't fishing more than a few minutes when I noticed in the distance a huge fog bank on the Eastern horizon, which looked to be moving in our direction.

Although the morning had been windless and still, all of a sudden there was a slight, wispy breeze that came at first in short puffs. "Quick! Get your line up now" said the suddenly animated Captain. Puzzled, I nevertheless complied. "Que pasa?" (what's happening?), I asked him over the motor's noise. He turned the boat around and at full throttle gunned the craft southwest toward the leeward side of Coronado Island as fast as the old boat could go. He pointed over his shoulder and with obvious alarm, yelled out the word to me so loudly that I heard it over the motor with perfect clarity. Chubasco!"

Within a few minutes, the full wind reached us and hit our boat like a freight train. The sea boiled and squirmed like a gigantic washing machine and all of a sudden lightning flashes started striking all around. The boat was lurching and launching over crests of walls of water, landing with a pounding thud on the water. I could feel the fiberglass bottom of the panga flex upward when it hit the water, so great was the impact force. It was nearly impossible to sit up straight and take the pounding. I even attempted at one point to lay down on the bottom of the boat, which is something anyone reading this should never do, as the pounding almost knocked me senseless. I had a growing sense that I was in serious danger, but we were doing exactly what we should and that was try to get behind the island as quickly as possible. Curiously, in the midst of this epic struggle, I saw a pod of killer whales right next to us in the frothy sea, one of the few times I have ever seen them in the Gulf so up close. Still, I was in no place or condition to enjoy them just then in any way.

After what seemed like a very long time due to the chaos, we reached the protected side of Coronado Island, where boats large and small were tucked in tightly to the sheltered shore, protected by the extinct volcanic mountain which blocked the horrendous wind. The second we got into a sheltered position against the onslaught, things immediately changed. We stayed there amongst all the pangas, fishing boats and one mega yacht owned by one of the World's wealthiest no less. Still, the Chubasco had held no consideration for anyone's station in life or their relative wealth. Nature had decided to show up that day in force, perhaps just to remind everything else of her preeminence. Or, perhaps it was just to demonstrate to me firsthand, a CHUBASCO!

https://www.sailingtotem.com/blog/chubasco-a-word-for-the-weather-wise

https://elchubascoparkcity.com/

El Chubasco - Located in Park City, Utah - Visit our Mexican Restaurant with authentic ingredients and all you can eat salsa bar.

17/02/2024

As he wandered the shore of the crystalline sea,
The sunshine warming his weathered face,
Did his energy spring from deep within, or did it flow from without, from this magical place?
Or maybe he and the place were one with the wind, and the waves, the relentless sun,
The birds, and the sense, and the mess and the blue…
Eternity infused with the old and the new

As he rested on the edge of a time washed bluff,
Transfixed by the infinite sea spread below
Was it his essence that made magic that day,
or the profoundness of all that he couldn’t know?
His thoughts, perhaps, were just vastness at play,
A current in the mystical sea,
A fleeting sense of drifting forever,
Wrapped up in the embrace of eternity…

14/02/2024

The “Baja” always was a very different place than the rest of Mexico, while having some distant political and social connections to the rest of her siblings on the mainland. She has a frontier taste to her, with an intoxicating raw physical beauty and a hardened patience in her eyes, although the features of Mother Mexico can be recognized in her brown skin and her chiseled faces, overheard in her people’s banter, and ever present in her social workings. Baja, as much a fickle spirit as a place, will both allow you to take sanctuary amidst her wonders, and perish mercilessly within her crucible. She is a land full to the brim with the rawest of dichotomies, sometimes profound, at other times kitschy and very often hidden away deeply in her soul. She can bake you in her deserts, drown you in her seas, stick you with all manner of spines and thorns and fangs and stingers, and all the while offer you refuge in her quiet beauty. If you have loosened your grip on that lustful illusion that you can control anything about her, are possessed of strength, patience and a pioneer heart that sways to her rhythms, you will fall in love with her deeply. I did. For she is of course, after all, a woman. A capricious, moody, beautiful, beguiling woman.

The desert here is ruthlessly sun-baked, rocky and parched, although it borders a teeming and prolific sea. The place, like her plants and animals, can seemingly wither and become shrunken and brown as she awaits rains that may take years to come. But, in the end, the rains do surely come, but rather like some kind of a chaotic, torrential assault against the wasting landscape. If only briefly, life gushes forth all around like the torrents that crash down the arroyos. Butterflies appear en masse, seemingly out of nowhere, and hurriedly fly in great numbers southward, until they turn after a few weeks, and fly hurriedly northward. It is as if they, too, are desperately looking for the place they thought they would find here before they perish. Little toads hop around flats and hills, making one wonder where they were while all was dry and rainless. The ever present dust is power washed off of everything, so that everything can start collecting it anew just afterwards. Trees and bushes burst forth in blooms of all colors, vines grow here and there, and insects abound, all within the space of a few days of a good rain. Deer fatten, and immediately start mating. Fox and coyotes seem to multiply in a few short months, chasing down the added jackrabbits and chipmunks that also appear. As if to add to the effect, the gritty, volcanic soil, laden with silica, iron and other minerals, gets scrubbed from the mountains and arroyos, and washed and blown into the sea. This feeds a huge bloom of diatoms, golden algae which are found at the front end of an incredibly prolific food chain, one of the most richly productive natural environments found in the world. So, in more ways than are obvious, all of creation here awaits the time when those rains of plenty fall, and all in unison immediately rise to the brief but vigorous occasion of opportunity, life, and sustenance. So too, do the people here.

Baja can seem to many temporal observers to be a place of isolation and tranquility, restful and solemn, quiet and starkly beautiful. But this is simply not the case. It is actually a place where the greatest of battles is raging on, and where great forces are at war, a big war, with big stakes and big winners and losers.

Fire and water fight against each other in constant, Promethean battles of attack and counterattack. The fire makes the biggest advances early on, before the water gathers itself to fight back. Deep, deep down in the bowels of the earth, safely beneath where water can encroach, the great fire blasts and tortures and forges it thermal weaponry into huge fields of magma, preparing for that pyroclastic moment when it launches an enormous, upward attack of unimaginable force, spewing molten rock and ash with it, as it tears through the water and out into the air, throwing its toxic detritus everywhere, while announcing its true intentions. Fire is, after all, maneuvering to take back space from its ancient and mortal enemy, water.

The latest theater where this is being played out is in the creation of the Baja Peninsula, among the newest of land masses on the planet. It may look like just mountains, islands and desert landscape, but a closer look proves out the real story to the careful observer. The molten lava, as it cooled recently, deposited enormous piles of reddish broken rocks on the slopes, where still little grows from this being so recent. Most places except in the few wide valleys or arroyo bottoms, the soil is sand, pebble and rock, showing that they were recently blasted and washed from the rocks that birthed them.

The sharp jagged peaks show that this is a new geology, still in the midst of forcing itself upward through the Earth’s crust, with no intention of stopping anytime soon. Know that this is the handiwork of fire, encroaching on the sea, depositing its own bridgework as it goes. The sea reacts slowly and patiently, and bides her time. But, soon enough, the sea fights back, and launches its unceasing assault in waves against the bulkheads of land, while sending its torrents of rain in driving attacks against the higher ground. The sun, in turn, sends its own fire down, to weaken the sea and draw its power away. This timeless cycle is working itself out always in Baja, and is part of her soul, and her story.

01/02/2024

"Aviso Importante"

Aún no tenemos fechas establecidas, estamos buscando el tiempo adecuado para realizar esta 3ra. Edición de Festival Antigua California... preparándonos para darles lo mejor de nosotros como siempre, sigue nuestras redes y estaremos dando a conocer más detalles... Gracias 😊