Milagro Real Estate

Our goals are to guide, assist and educate YOU, the buyer, throughout your real estate purchase, making this a simple and pleasant experience.



Hotel California
Recently renovated the famous Hotel California has now reopened

Todos Santos

It is 8.30 am and the main street of Todos Santos is deserted. The sun has been up for two hours but the air is cool with the still lingering vestiges of a sea mist carpeting the scattered palm groves and open fields below.

All is green and a sense of serenity cum surrealism reigns - for this is Baja California Sur where the peninsula's typically barren, semi-desert landscape has suddenly and radically changed.

The contrast is total and the surrealism is compounded by the quiet. Is this the sleepy Mexican village of one's imagination or has the last inhabitant left and thrown away the key? Such musings are short lived and reality returns with a jolt, a pickup truck noisily changes gear as it struggles up a side street nearby. Was my imagination deliberately deceiving my senses, because suddenly I am conscious of many other extraneous sounds and movements. Time for a coffee - but it was nice while it lasted!

In fact the sense of surrealism Todos Santos evoked in me that morning never really left even after my third visit a week later. The town still maintained that slow paced idyllic feel even by mid morning when the crowds from Cabo San Lucas arrive for the day to "escape" from their fellow tourists. Todos Santos mysteriously even managed to slow these avid-picture takers-cum-souvenir-hunters down!

 Where to go to start ones day in Todos Santos and get a caffeine fix? The Todos Santos Cafe of course. This high ceilinged historic brick and adobe structure serves great coffee, huge fresh baked muffins and genuine North American breakfasts. The surrealism changes face but continues.

The area has long been a geographical oasis where an abundant supply of water in a barren land  attracted indigenous tribes, possibly nomadic, to the area nearly 3,000 thousand years before the arrival of the first Spanish missionary in 1723. The mission was established to supply fruits and vegetables for the parent mission in La Paz. The Guaicura peoples who lived here were wiped out by smallpox within a decade or two of the Spanish arrival and the Pericu were brought in as field labourers. One of the original crops planted by the missionaries was sugarcane and when demand for it boomed in the mid nineteenth century so did the town.

The lasting effect of this wealth was the construction of many substantial colonial style buildings - including a theatre - which gave structure and focus to the town and helped kick start the town's revival as a cultural and tourist centre 100 years later.

The decline came in the late 1940s when the town's fortunes dropped as sugar prices fell. This by itself would have been a serious problem, but it was compounded by the drying up of the over-utilized springs that had fuelled the boom. The ensuing water shortage lasted three decades and the town reverted to a mix of subsistence economy and small scale commercial farming. The strain on the springs was thus alleviated by three decades of reduced water consumption and this, combined with the return of the rains, gradually replenished the water supply. The final factors that completed the long term viability of Todos Santos as a farming community came in the form of two man-made improvements: the completion of the Santa Inez Dam in 1983 ensured a constant supply of water and the completion of the paving of Highway 19 secured access to outside customers. The highway not only gave good connections to La Paz and Cabo San Lucas but also linked Todos Santos (via Mexico 1) to the highly profitable US market. Now local farmers could grow cash crops with confidence. A new agricultural boom had begun. A road by definition goes two ways and Todos Santos now found itself on the tourist map and, unbeknownst to anybody at the time, on the road to a cultural boom.

While 99% of the money, materials and tourists poured into Los Cabos, a few adventurous souls preferred the laid back lifestyle of Todos Santos. Surfers soon discovered the great waves rolling in from the vast uninterrupted waters of the Pacific while RV'ers revelled in the almost deserted palm fringed beaches just two miles from town! North American artists, writers and craftsmen meanwhile found the town itself to be an ideal spot to pursue their vocations. They rented or bought and refurbished the lovely 19th and 20th century buildings turning them into homes, workshops and galleries. New entrepreneurs arrived and began converting other historic buildings into small hotels, restaurants and craft shops. Perhaps Todos Santos's most famous commercial drawing card after the newly renovated Hotel California is the Cafe Santa Fe - a must place for superb Italian cuisine.

The number of historic buildings available for conversion was of course finite, so new houses and small villas were soon sprouting up between the fields and orchards surrounding the town. Some of these were converted into unique guest houses where visitors can enjoy what only can be termed "pastoral elegance".

 The myth of the link between the Hotel California and that famous song has continued to prevail and tourists still flock to visit this Eagle's 'shrine'. This and the16 room Hacienda Inn on the rapidly developing north end of the town are the two largest hostelries in town. Swiss residents Juerg and Libusche Wiesendanger also recognized the need for more rooms but took a different route. Unlike other hotels they decided to take advantage of Todos Santos' other asset, the Pacific Ocean. They built their small luxury boutique hotel, Posada la Poza, in front of the a freshwater lagoon.

New construction and the conversion of older buildings naturally requires the services of real estate agents. Four, each within a stone's throw of one another, now straddle the main street. All have extensive knowledge of the area - Canadian born Dale Townsend of Milagro Real Estate, for example, has over twenty years experience in the business. Even though prices of lots and houses have risen considerably over the last decade, many are still affordable especially when compared to Los Cabos prices. With rumours that the new gated community planned for Todos Santos is breaking ground can the town's housing prices withstand the inevitable price surge this development will initiate?