Santa Rosalia

We’ve been here for almost two weeks and we’ve learned a lot about this little town. It is an old French copper mining town. They traded with a plant back in the 1800’s in Tacoma. In return, Tacoma shipped lumber back on the empty barges. Most of the old buildings here are built from that lumber that came from the Seattle area. Strange, isn’t it?

In addition to the remnants of the old mine and smelter, which shut down about 10 years ago, there is a large squid fishing fleet here. Each evening about 200 pengas stream out of the harbor to “jig” for squid. They lower these hooks down into the water about 1000 feet, and snag a 20 to 30 pound squid. Other squid start attacking the hurt squid and rise up to the surface en masse. The fishermen can’t pull them into the boats fast enough. Each night they haul about 100 to 150 tons of squid to the processors where they are shipped to Korea and Japan. With that much biomass extracted from the sea, there are sure to be several other species thrown out of balance.

Apparently in the 1970’s the sharks used to be so thick that you couldn’t catch a fish. The sharks would take the bait before a fish would ever see it. Sharks back then mainly ate the squid, which is currently exploding. Most of the sharks were killed off because of “finning”. For several years, Mexico accepted money from Japan to allow them to harvest their seas. The Japanese came over with massive processors and as it has been described by many, vacuumed the sea. They’ve since been forced to look elsewhere as Mexico realized its mistake, but the damage to many species has already been done. And before we point fingers at Japan, we should remember that our harvesting of beef has done tremendous damage to North, Central, and South America – too many people everywhere.

Anyway, these squid fisher guys usually go out at night, because it is much cooler (not because of the light) and often many of them are busy scoring crack on the Quay, near where we are anchored. It makes for interesting entertainment. Just a few days ago they had a massive bust by some plain clothes cops. You could see these guys getting arrested, and other pengas were coming up to the wall to still buy some. The guys under arrest were quietly trying to wave them off, but not many of them caught the clue.

So this town also has a church that was designed by the world famous Eiffel architect, the same guy who designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The church looks really out of place here. Sort of a like something that has been propped up into place at a time when the town was booming with dreams of bigger things, like a giant mall in a similar façade. Fortunately, just the church was done with the “Eiffel Touch” and Rosalia remains mostly wooden buildings from an era long gone.

As a cultural connection with the bygone French, you can still buy Baguettes here. We’ve found lots of good food, a VEGETARIAN restaurant, a place for Sherrell to buy some fins, and material for more sun shades.