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Getting a putting green ready for the golfers at the
Casa Blanca condominium. |
As the last edge of sun slipped
into the Sea of Cortez on a Saturday night in October, the Old
Port corner of Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, kicked into high gear.
Bunches of sunburned tourists rolled in, fresh from the beach,
poring over vendors' seashell necklaces and slipping into
open-air cafes for fish tacos and margaritas. It was a
classic seaside resort town scene: casual, small and quaint.
But peer west from the water's edge, toward Puerto Peñasco's
extended arm, Sandy Beach, and you see a starkly different vista
taking shape: a jagged wall of a dozen massive new condo-hotel
resorts, in varying states of construction, rising toward the
sky like a new Cancún.
To the crowds of sun-loving tourists who are now flocking here from
the United States, the development is a welcome new addition to
Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, as it's called in English. The
town - blessed with a surreal desert-meets-sea landscape, balmy
year-round temperatures, English-speaking expatriates and an
intact Old Port fishing village - has lured a mix of Arizona
retirees and spring break revelers for years. Now, with its
growing crop of new restaurants and upscale resorts that please
middle-American tastes and budgets, Rocky Point is a draw to
more vacationers.
"Every week, there are more visitors," said Germán Palacio Jiménez,
who runs the Point, Malecón Fundadores, 200, (entrées $10 to
$14; all prices are in dollars), a year-old waterfront seafood
spot. "We've had customers from Colorado, New Mexico - even New
York." Other new places offer everything from Mexican fusion to
the European cafe fare of Coffee's Haus, Boulevard Benito Juárez,
216B; (52-638) 388-1065. The most expensive meal is $7.
Although the narrow beaches here are coarse and beige - more like
New Jersey than the Yucatán - this is the closest shoreline to
Arizona, just 225 miles from Phoenix. And the town, an hour
south of the border, is in Mexico's free zone so tourists from
the United States need no special permits.
"This place is like the next San Diego, but with bigger bang for
your buck," said Mike Callaway, 48, a government employee from
Tucson. He was sipping a Corona on a recent afternoon at the
Sonoran Sun, where he paid $230 a night for his suite. The
property is one of three new luxury Sonoran Resorts on Sandy
Beach that are also hotels.
Real estate prices are still affordable compared with those of
other beach resorts, making it relatively easy to snag a
beachfront condo. The Sun's rental manager, Roberto García, said
that the 228 units sold out in seven hours last summer at an
average of $300,000 each. That's the typical price for a
waterfront condo, with annual appreciation rates of about 25
percent in the last two years, said Brad Henderson, sales
manager for Coldwell Banker.
Meanwhile, plans for Puerto Peñasco and its surrounding deserts
continue to expand. There are more than 40 large-scale
developments in construction or expansion, plus three new golf
courses and six more due.
A small airport for charter flights now offered by Westwind Air
Service (each flight is priced separately) reopened in September
after a $2.5 million renovation; an international airport has a
projected opening date of 2008. Also being built is a scenic
coastal highway that will link Puerto Peñasco with cities to the
north and south.
Photo Credit: Jeff Topping for The New York
Times |
