Found Treasure: Mazatlán, Topolobampo and La Paz

May 23, 2025—When the Mexican federales start asking questions, I’ve been awake about a minute.

“¿De donde vienes?” one asks.

I’ve fielded the same question a few times on this bus, while heading from just over the border to Mazatlán, saying “Tijuana” in my best Mexican accent, as casually as I can.

Each time the checkpoint policía moved down the aisle.

This time, I was groggy from an uneven overnight sleep.

“California,” I say.

Their eyes glimmer.

And I think, Mierda.

The federale doing the talking has me empty my pockets on my lap and the seats next to me. He probes, looking for a pretense for a payoff.

His partner is less subtle.

Boulder-built, stone-faced and grunting softly, he leans over and slowly—almost elegantly-—wraps his fingers around the four $10 bills on my thigh.

I’m glad I’m not carrying more American currency.

The search ends abruptly. They disembark, leaving me with my limited pesos.

The shakedown isn’t a fun experience, or a totally surprising one, but it is an experience.

And, to be fair, the lone guero on this 28-hour bus sojourn south did choose to take the autobús because I figured I’d encounter things I hadn’t before. (That proves true, from the Sonoran desert scenery to the El Chapo mugs at the bus stop mall.)

It’s also a reminder that the interstate-less-traveled involves unexpected turns.

Here appear other intriguing twists from two weeks on two Sea of Cortez coasts, illustrated with 40+ photos, and involving characters like an expat Santa Cruz food writer and a long-tailed coatimundi who acts like he owns the beach.  

Editor’s note: Found Treasures has wandered through a small world of destinations since it launched, papillae at the ready.

Highlights include San Marcos La Laguna in Guatemala, Mendocino Wine/Redwood Country and Sonoma Cheese Country.

One OG Edible Monterey Bay international travel story (“Eat the World“) laid the adventure-hunger groundwork for the series, and last month’s “A Food-Forward Report From Vietnam by a 1st-Time International Traveler,” courtesy of contributor Robert Eliason, foreshadows similar stories coming soon, from a wider range of voices.

In fact, those pieces vibe with a new regular print feature that debuts with the summer issue—out at the start of June—called “Appetite for Travel.”

For now, dive into these images in and around the Sea of Cortez, as the storied—and dramatically retrofitted—Western Flyer boat of John Steinbeck and Doc Ricketts fame is doing its own Baja-centric circuit.

More on that trip-of-a-trip, which is ongoing as this publishes, and another surprising travel reveal, at the end of the photo gallery below, under the heading “The Places You’ll Go.” (Much love, Dr. Seuss.)

The Places You’ll Go

At a place called Casa Etnika in Mazatlán, tiny fantastical mini alebrijes explode with kinetic color, fabrics transmit place and craft, and the overall artisan onda of the place interweaves whimsical with weighty.

Leave it to my sworn travel symbiote to spend long enough in there I encounter a different sort of destiny on a shelf I might not have, if I lingered a moment less.

I see Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, study a few stanzas, and flip to the back.

And think to myself mierda, again. This time, in a good way: The editor’s a Santa Cruz soul.

It makes sense that Janet Blaser, a former food critic and managing editor for Santa Cruz Sentinel and Good Times Santa Cruz, respectively, found a heart home here, and encourages others to consider it.

There’s that kind of coastal/artistic/atypical energy at play in both places.

She does so by way of testimonials, not from experienced reporters like herself, but relocated residents with a voice who want to honor their experiences.

One contributor describes “a sense of wonder, of challenge, of peace,” another “the gift of new eyes,” another still “the love of the art, the history, the architecture, the culture, the food.”

It’s not all bougainvillea and honeybees, and isn’t confronting economic inequities and politics that strain the Mexican-American dynamic, but it’s honest talk.

When Blaser and I talk later, she emphasizes de-emphasizing barriers.

“People have very real challenges in their psyche: ‘I’m afraid I can’t take my dog.’ ‘I can’t speak the language.’ ‘I’m afraid of the cartel,'” she says. “The point is, whatever your normal life or what you want it to be, you will create that here just as easily. You’re going to find grocery stores, doctors, and it’s cheaper, and prettier, and more relaxing.”

A flyer about the Flyer delivered the second literary-related twist.

At Allende Books in La Paz—the type of curated place where an hour and a souvenir budget evaporate without warning—the small poster read, in part, “In 1940, John Steinbeck & biologist Ed Ricketts set sail aboard the Western Flyer on a journey to the Gulf of California—a voyage that inspired generations.”

It goes on to describe how a restored Flyer had just re-launched, 85 years later, on three-month expedition “filled with science, education and community outreach.”

The Western Flyer’s 2025 journey began with state-of-the-art retrofitting in Moss Landing and a send-off from Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf.

It would reach La Paz two days after we left—in a sequence of five Baja stops that invite students on board to share in ambitious research that would’ve tickled Ricketts—and continues on, mooring at Cabo Pulmo as this publishes, and its real time tracker indicates.

A passage from Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez, where he quotes Doc, feels like a good way to close:

“We must remember three things,” [Doc] said to them.

“I will tell them to you in the order of their importance.

“Number one and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have.

“Number two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don’t we won’t have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might.

“And number three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes, and such things.“

Reasonable minds can differ on Ricketts’ order of priorities.

It’s harder to argue the logic within them, which I’ll extend from The Flyer’s mission to current North American travel: Please care for the continental relationship we live in, because it provides for a whole lot of fun, broadened understanding and—yes—good eating.