Heads Found In Cooler (Los Cabos)

  

Cabo San Lucas beheadings: Cartel killings traumatize resort town as heads found in cooler

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Authorities in Mexico's Baja California Sur state say two heads have been found in a cooler just two blocks from the tourist zone of Cabo San Lucas.

One day earlier, the state prosecutor's office announced that two dismembered bodies were found in another cooler in the tourist corridor.

On Sunday, state prosecutors also said the total bodies found after several days of excavation of clandestine graves had reached 18. The bodies of five women and 13 men were found in 12 graves near the Cabo Pulmo nature reserve. They were discovered off a road that runs between the reserve and the resort of San Jose del Cabo.

When is it that you know “it’s over?”  I know this area, Los Cabos, so well.  We used to vacation there regularly, as frequently as possible.  Once we discovered it, there was nowhere else we wanted to go. Its reputation then was as an utterly quiet, peaceful, complete retreat from the beaten path of work, career, etc.  Back then, before cell phones were ubiquitous, even the high-pressure businesses we worked in accepted it if once a year you disappeared from radar for a little while and were satisfied if you placed one of two brief (and quite expensive, hard-to-make) calls from the road.  After we were kidnapped in Mexico City, we decided to continue on to Twin Dolphin in Cabo San Lucas because Cabo was the place where Mexicans themselves went to escape the difficulties and depredations of their increasingly endangered lives on the mainland.  No more it seems.  I think of my friends back in Cabo whom I haven’t seen since Twin Dolphin disappeared to make way for a new mega-resort that never got built post-2008 and am very sad and sorry for them.  I cannot tell you how great it was there.  Sea, sky, and mountains all together. Tilting planes, perfect weather. 

CABO

There are only a few places outside the United States where I’ve spent a significant amount of time.  All of them mean a lot to me. Unfortunately, it’s been years since I’ve ever visited any of them.

One is Los Cabos at the tip of the California peninsula, where the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez meet.  We first visited on a kind of hunch, loved it, and returned regularly for many years.

 

One pleasure of the trip was that it’s a long trek from New York.  By the time you arrived, you really felt as though you had embarked on a great journey.  

My favorite transit was a crazy New York to Miami to Mexico City to Guadalajara to Los Cabos jaunt on Mexicana Airlines.  The interior of our airplane was festooned with those marvelous multicolored Mexican paper cut-out decorations, the food (even in coach) was extremely good (my breakfast omelette even came with a green chili accompaniment in a little plastic envelope), and complimentary sparkling wine flowed throughout the long airborne day.  

The plane flew so low  through the Sierra Madres, it seemed as though the pilots were taking us on a special route open only to elite professionals or aficionados, so low you imagined you could spot the lions you knew were down there.  

Once we flew down from LA on Air Alaska, which I was anxious to do so that I could see the length and breadth of Baja California.

 

During our traveling days there, Los Cabos was hardly unknown, but it still pre-dated the current era of every-monthly travel magazine publicity.   It was certainly less spoiled than it probably is now by hyper-traffic and glitz (Martha Stewart, Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux) and we made friends on land and in and on the water.  Jane got to experience Cabo when she was very young and we even renewed our wedding vows on the beach at Twin Dolphin.

I mention all this because, amid the beheadings, the Ebola outbreak, enterovirus incursion and everything else, Los Cabos suffered greatly during Hurricane Odile.  I’m sure it will recover, but reading about the destruction makes me feel far from home and helpless. 

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