San Carlos, Magdalena de Kino, Sonora & back to the USA

We left off in Yávaros, the best birding spot we've found in Sonora!  We drove north on a good back road taking us to Ciudad Obregón, the major town for the huge agricultural valleys in this area.  We stopped for fuel and saw again that diesel in Mexico is expensive: 14.2 pesos per liter, about $3.85 US per gallon!  For many years, Mexican fuel was considerably less than the US prices, but no more, especially with the very low crude prices at this time in the US!  It took a total of 5-1/2 hours to get back to San Carlos, a run of 173 miles.  We checked in again at Totonaka RV Park for 3 nights. We needed some R&R time to clean up the rig and ourselves, do some sightseeing, some grocery shopping and get the rig washed and waxed before heading back to the US.  

 

Grocery shopping is easy in San Carlos with a Ley Express supermercado, smaller than the big Ley stores in large towns, but very adequate for our purposes and about a mile from the campground.  We also needed to refill one of our three 1 gallon drinking water bottles so went to the Royal Purified Water store and spent 3 whole pesos (exchange now 15 pesos to one US$) or about 20 cents US. Almost no one in Mexico drinks the tap water, so there are reverse osmosis water shops in virtually every village to supply this need.  Most people get 5 gallon bottles but we can't store that in our RV so we use 1 gallon bottles.  There is also a hefty deposit of about 150 pesos on the 5 gallon bottles unless you trade in your old one so we avoid that too.  The other need was Mexican ice cream, which is far creamier than US and is usually quite inexpensive so we stopped at the Thrifty ice cream store and had 2 cones.  The chocolate is more chocolate-ly and the fruit flavors like strawberry are more flavorful!

Next came the search for a car wash place.  Strangely in San Carlos, there are 2 hand car washes, next to each other, only separated by a taco stand!  We went to the bigger, busier one and in a hour, we were washed and waxed, no machines, all hand done and beautiful for the equivalent of $35 US.  We drove around town one afternoon and were amazed by the amount of beachside condos here since our last visit.  San Carlos has always been dominated by gringos and even more so now!  But the economy here is still shaky and like most parts of Mexico, tourism is way down!  

We went out to the high El Mirador viewpoint overlooking the whole coast of San Carlos and Guaymas and enjoyed watching the Mexican families and children.  Lots of curio stands but we resisted!   

Way down below, some people expressing love and above at the Mirador a family picture

Drove back to the big marina and walked around looking at the boats.  Then the next quest was to find some good Mexican beer!  It's appalling how Bud Light and even Coors Light have taken over in Mexico pushing out the great Mexican beers with promotional $ and big displays in the supermercados and even smaller stores and beer depósitos.  We found a depósito that admitted to having regular (NOT light) Pacífico and we bought 12 cans for the same price as Bud Light! 

Lots of gringo bucks!

Monday was Maryke's birthday so we walked up the street looking for a restaurant to properly celebrate the occasion and found a seaside seafood restaurant about 2 blocks away called Charlie's Rock, because it sits on a huge flat rock about ½ block long with a palm leaf roof and sides open to the water.  We could watch the gulls fly close by looking for a handout and best of all, watch the sunset!  The food was absolutely delicious with Lin's shrimp and Maryke's dorado fish dish, good service and they had our favorite beer, Negra Modelo!! What more could you ask for???  

Restaurant Charlie's Rock and view with Guaymas in the distance

So on Tuesday 3/3, we started north.  It had rained again at night creating a few dusty runs on our fresh wax job—darn it!  We arrived in Hermosillo at 12:15 PM and did some more grocery shopping at the big  Ley supermercado, specifically stocked up on orejas and Mexican sugar cookies. 

Off again for Rancho Betania, the place where our Chapter 8 Rally camped almost a month before.  We arrived there  at 4PM and paid 150 pesos for a full hookup site and retrieved our friend's reading glasses from the camp leader, Salvador.  Another van camper followed us in and later when talking to them, we discovered they were from Halifax, Nova Scotia and we had a good talk about how much we enjoyed Halifax when we went to the Canadian Maritimes 5 years ago and when we told him we were going to Newfoundland this Spring, he told us his favorite places.  Great coincidence! We had an extremely quiet night and a good rest.  It rained again overnight so more dust on the wax on the way out of camp!

Next morning, we drove about 40 minutes north to the town of Magdalena de Kino, famous as the burial site of Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, the famed Jesuit missionary who founded a chain of missions in Northern Sonora, Mexico and Southern Arizona, beginning in 1687. Kino's grave was finally found and overwhelmingly verified in May 1966 by a expert team of anthropologists and historians after many years of elusive search around the town of Magdalena, beginning as early as 1919.  Kino died in 1711 and was buried by Padre Campos in the chapel of San Francisco Xavier here in Magdalena as he carefully recorded.  The problem was where was the chapel in 1711 and where was the town itself in 1711?  Eventually, a historian found an obscure account from 1828 describing the chapel and its location at that time and mention of the two lay persons buried there. The location of the present day church of Santa Maria Magdalena completed in 1822 was found to be a very long block away from the location of the original church begun in 1705 with the 1711 chapel of San Francisco Xavier separated by several hundred yards.  When these structures fell, the town Palacio Municipal or City Hall was constructed over the sites and was in use until 1966 when Kino's grave was discovered and the city offices were then moved 3 blocks away to a school which had formerly been the Palacio Municipal!   Over 2 KM of trenches were dug all over the central area of town where the former and current churches and chapels were located before the grave site was finally found with all five burials exactly in the proper location and relationship to each other as reported 255 years earlier by a very precise Padre!   Extensive forensic research was then done to positively confirm the identities and finally conclude the search for Padre Kino!

Statue of Father Kino--- detail on Church facade----inside look towards main altar

Some of the statues were dressed in real robes for Lent ---- Monstrance with remnant of bone from St. Francis

Prominent Magdalena citizens, Sonora State and Mexican Federal officials and the INAH federal anthropological agency formulated a complex plan to fund and build the remarkable Padre Kino Memorial Plaza that exists today.  

The Plaza takes up about 3 square blocks surrounding the church, which was also restored, the San Francisco Xavier chapel, a monumental crypt for Kino's burial site with murals of his life, a statue of Padre Kino, a large U-shaped Spanish style arcade with a Kino Museum and Library, religious article sales and other shops and restaurants. The town name was changed to Magdalena del Kino to celebrate the great discovery! The President of Mexico, Luis Echeverria Alvarez, who had taken a personal interest in this project, came to Magdalena and dedicated the completed Plaza on May 3, 1971.  Magdalena is now also a Pueblo Mágico, the second one in Sonora.

The Kino crypt has 4 windows to view downwards about 10 feet to view the skeleton of Padre Kino, who was buried along with two Padres from Mission Tubatama and 2 lay persons.  Along with the murals painted on the ceiling of the crypt, it is very impressive. 

The church is in very good shape and the adjacent San Francisco Xavier chapel is quite plain with a life-size figure of the Saint clothed in Franciscan garb lying on a sepulchre in the center. The faithful stand in long lines to touch this figure and some lift up the head and kiss it, in their devotion.  A relic of an arm bone is displayed nearby in a gold monstrance.  We found the story of the long path to the discovery of Kino's grave very interesting.

We left Magdalena de Kino later that morning and drove 58 miles to the US border and found only six vehicles ahead in our line—unheard of to have such a short line!!  A very pleasant female agent asked the usual questions, came inside to look around, announced that our RV was “awesome” and passed us without the usual detour to the dreaded “secondary” inspection.  We celebrated our speedy border passage a few minutes later with an all American cheeseburger at McDonald's in Nogales, Arizona!!  We were back in the good old US of A!!      More on Padre Kino coming in the next exciting post!