Days after Kirk Robinson was fired from a job he hated, he and a windsurfing friend loaded their gear into his Volkswagen van and drove south from Los Angeles in search of a mythical beach.
It was the early 1990s, and the two had heard vague stories about a remote spot at the end of Baja where the wind was strong and gentle from noon to dusk.
In about three days they covered more than a thousand miles without luck. They were tired and discouraged studying a map in a restaurant in La Paz when they spotted a wide bay about an hour to the south that seemed to have potential. After a few beers, they decided to try it in the morning because they had nothing better to do.
On the last stretch, the old VW had to be lured up a steep mountain and through a sweltering, sweltering pan desert. Then they reached the bottom of La Ventana Bay.
There, they found “epic wave conditions for about three straight days,” Robinson recalled. “It was just great.”
In a fit of escapism that made his mother “apoplectic,” Robinson pawned everything he had and scraped together $35,000 for five acres of sand and cacti on the shores of the nearly deserted bay. He did not dream of getting rich; he just hoped to learn enough to windsurf and rent humble casitas to stock up on tacos and beer.
Today, La Ventana is one of the premier wind sports destinations in the world, attracting adventurous athletes from Europe, Canada and especially California. What was once a fishing village with a few hundred inhabitants now hosts nearly 10,000 people during the windy season, which lasts from late November to late March.
Vacant lots the size of a fraction of Robinson’s old house have sold for millions. A collection of casitas not much larger than the one he built is on the market for $14 million.
Many of the price increases have happened in the past three years, says Nikky Avatara, a real estate agent who moved to Baja from Lake Tahoe a decade ago.
It’s the latest example of how the destination map has been reimagined by a generation of young, tech-savvy adventurers who learned during the pandemic that they can work anywhere.
“It’s a global, social awakening about tourism and how we want to spend our time,” said Olivia Rose Withington, who grew up in Cozumel and moved to La Ventana with her family 15 years ago. They own Playa Central, a large yellow converted warehouse on the beach that serves as a bar, kitesurfing school, live music venue and de facto town centre.
In many places, including Lisbon, Portugal and Mexico City, the post-pandemic wave of digital nomads has driven up rents and sparked widespread resentment among local residents. That was less of a problem in rural La Ventana, where Mexican families like Withington own many of the businesses and where others have owned their homes and land in the bay for generations and profited from selling vacant lots to foreigners.
“The quality of life has improved significantly with the money that has come in,” Withington said. “Now children can go to university; lawyers and doctors and nurses are trained.”
But its rapid growth has led to other sustainability issues in a remote outpost: It has one paved road and is a two-hour drive north of Cabo San Lucas Airport, through little but desert.
There are no sewers – everyone has septic tanks – and there is widespread fear of what will happen if it leaks into the bay.
Older buildings on the south side of town are connected to a main line that carries fresh water, but the new homes in the north depend on water from a local aquifer. With hundreds of building permits outstanding, about twice as many as a year ago, there is great concern about how long the water will last.
And many foreigners who were drawn to La Ventana by the wind in their youth are now retiring here to take advantage of the relatively low cost of everything but housing. But they are used to air conditioning, and all this equipment running in the summer causes frequent power outages.
The problem only gets worse when a storm hits, says Rico Rodriguez, a kitesurfing instructor who moved to La Ventana from La Paz to build a life around the wind.
“We will be without power for a week,” he said.
These growing pains are mostly endured by locals, many of whom are grateful for the chance to start small, thriving businesses in the relative anonymity of the desert.
More ominous is the fear that their success has caught the attention of Mexico’s “oligarchs” — old, wealthy urban families and nouveau-rich drug cartel bosses whose investments have filled places like Cancun and Cabo San Lucas with all-inclusive resorts that boost the local business.
“I would say the biggest threat tourism poses here is putting us on the map for these people,” Withington said. Once they get involved, it’s like “development fire.”
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The natural beauty in this corner of Baja is breathtaking, but the property that draws so many people is unseen.
In the winter, the weather pattern produced by Southern California’s Santa Ana winds sends a steady breeze from the north up the east coast of the Baja Peninsula along the Gulf of California.
Just before reaching La Ventana, this breeze will blow between the mountains and a long, slender island that runs parallel to the coast and rises 600 meters above the water. This creates a venturi effect that forces and accelerates the wind into a narrow passage, like putting your thumb over the end of a hose.
That wind whistles in La Ventana Bay, where another lucky geographic feature gives a second boost. Just outside the city is the large, flat stretch of desert that Robinson traversed 30 years ago. It is surrounded by mountains on three sides and, like the casserole from the looks of it, it heats the air above the surface, causing it to quickly rise and be replaced by cooler air coming in above the water. This is called thermals.
La Ventana’s thermal temperature is so strong and reliable that it catapults this pueblo into the pantheon of great windsport destinations, along with Maui’s north coast, the Columbia River Gorge, Spain’s Tarifa – on the narrowest gorge between Europe and Africa – and Cape Town’s South Africa.
Windsurfing, the sport that attracted early adventurers, rests on a large, heavy plank with a sail bolted to the center. The equipment is bulky – you need a truck to lug it around – and it’s notoriously difficult to learn. No wonder windsurfing disappeared almost 20 years ago when kitesurfing emerged.
Kites are large but lightweight and can be folded into a small backpack. They are controlled with long, thin lines that weigh next to nothing. Strapped to the rider’s waist with a padded harness, kites fly 80 feet where the wind is stronger than at the surface. And kites travel in wide, sweeping arcs, generating much more power than a traditional sail.
However, flying involves a steep learning curve that is sometimes serious – hardly anyone graduates without at least one memorable accident or “dragon mare”. But those who persevere will be rewarded with an unparalleled experience.
Ordinary surfers can lie on a board for hours, paddling back and forth in the hope of a euphoric ride that is usually over in seconds.
For kite surfers, that feeling of height can last for hours. On a good day, even a long-distance runner’s legs will weaken and give way long before the wind does.
Once a kite moves away from shore, the only noise comes from the wind and the board bouncing across the surface at 20 mph.
Beyond that, a rider can reduce the power of the kite to catch a swell and move in front of it, primarily through the buoyancy of the water underfoot. Or they can turn around, increase power and fire directly at an approaching wave, using that as a ramp to launch 20, 30, 40 feet above the water.
That moment at the pinnacle of a good jump, floating high above a raging sea in almost total stillness, is pure magic.
Well done, landings are beautiful. A properly controlled kite acts like a parachute and can land the rider on a swell, allowing him to maintain speed and gracefully surf away, sometimes to the cheers of the beach crowd.
Badly done, all bets are off. If a kite senses something going wrong in the air, the best thing you can do is pull its limbs close to its body and try to hit the water club first, like a kid taking a cannon shot from the high dive. There is also cheering.
Battered egos and battered gear are the order of the day, while serious injuries are mercifully rare. But it seems risky, which is one of the reasons why kitesurfing has never become more than a niche sport.
The next development, replacing the kite with a portable, inflatable wing, quickly caught on. Less power is required and there are no long lines to get caught in, so ‘winging’ is a lot less intimidating – an accessibility that increases crowds at popular wind destinations, including La Ventana.
“It’s safe to let kids try it,” Robinson said, and “they pick it up quickly.” Older pilots, whose bodies can no longer withstand the blows, also migrate.
“You can probably fly up to 100,” Robinson said.
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After recently telling his story for about an hour over breakfast at La Ventana, 67-year-old Robinson leaned back in his chair and grabbed his coffee mug.
In the early ’90s, before the Internet, it was hard to get accurate information, he said. Most of what he knew about the mythical windswept beach came from magazines and word of mouth: it was called Las Cruces, there was a club that Bing Crosby and Desi Arnaz belonged to, and “it’s not that,” he said, pointing. on the bay.
“We never found it on that original trip,” he said, but this beach isn’t very windy anyway.
What they found is better than they dared to dream. Three decades later, just before the recent price rally, Robinson sold his land and kitesurf school for about $1 million, or nearly 30 times his original investment.
“I never wanted to get rich, otherwise I would never have taken up windsurfing,” he said. “It was like a vow of poverty.”
Robinson, his wife (another Californian he met in La Ventana) and their two rescue dogs – both local residents – still spend the winters in the bay in a house across from their old property. Despite the rapid development around them, they cannot tear themselves away. The magical light, the barren desert.
“It’s kind of like Santa Fe with an ocean; we just really fell in love to be here.
His mother eventually forgave him
Source: LA Times