Blog from the Sea of Cortez: Santa Rosalia

Some blog entries just write themself. This is one of them.

This morning, we pulled into Santa Rosalía, and old French mining town. It was founded in 1884, and for 70 years, millions of dollars worth of copper was extracted until the mines played out. After that, they were never profitable, and the town has tried to reinvent itself as a tourist town. 

Of particular pride is the opening of Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Mulegé (ITESME) in 2005. Since then, it has come a long way as a technical college, offering programs in electrics, renewable energy, hospitality, IT, and mining. 

An old steam shovel where it dropped.

The old refractory furnace.

Lots of colorful architecture.

The town was not visited by Steinbeck and Ricketts, probably because they were deterred by the very active smelter at the time and all the smoke it created, but we were eager to visit. One of our board members, Dr. William Gilly, has been to the town many times, and has been working to introduce a marine sciences program at ITESME, so the town already knew about Flyer.

Once again, our local partneers, this time ITESME and Hagamos Más, came through. The welcome the town gave us was humbling. 

The town turned out!

Local Yaqui dancers performing
a traditional dance.

Imagine our astonishment when we were presented with
this model of the Flyer! Even the doors open!

Even more astonishing was the fleet of 70
tiny Flyers, one for each guest.

Me with my little Flyer.

One of the Yaqui dancers in our engine room.

It wasn't too long ago that
Western Flyer looked like this.