Rooms at Hotel Mediterrane! The rooms reflect our inspiration by the Greek island Mykonos and the Mexican tradition. All the rooms are very tranquil and face our little oasis with palms, citrus, bougainvillea and of course cacti. They are decorated with original art by George Hitchcock and offer a seating area, private toilet/shower, TV, Cable TV, radio with alarm clock and CD player, refrigerator, quiet individually controlled air conditioning (mini split system) and wireless access to the internet with your notebook. Rates shown below are Summer (May to September) and Winter (October to April). Click for larger photo are spacious rooms on the ground level and have one king size bed. Rates Summer: 1 or 2 US$ 65 for two people. Rates Winter: US$ 66 for one person / US$ 72 for two people. is a small room upstairs with a double bed and a balcony with bay view. Rates Summer: 1 or 2 people US$ 65 Rates Winter: US$ 66 for one person / US$ 72 for two people. is a spacious room upstairs and has one king size bed and a balcony. Rates Summer: 1 or 2 people US$ 70. Rates Winter: 1 or 2 people US$ 80. is upstairs and has a beautiful dome ceiling, balcony with view of the bay and one king bed. Rates Summer: 1 or 2 people US$ 75 Rates Winter: 1 or 2 people US$ 85 is on ground level, has one king size bed and a double bed, garden view and outdoor seating area. Rates Summer: 1 or 2 people US$ 75, each additional person US$ 10 Rates Winter: 1 or 2 people US$ 85, each additional person US$ 10 is on the second floor (access with a spiral staircase) with a king size bed, has a partial bay view and palm leaf covered seating area and private terrace. is on the second floor with a bayview window, has a king size bed and a shaded private terrace. 13 % tax not included in the above rates. Stay 7 nights and get 15% discount. (Except on restricted dates)

Enjoy our Restaurant La Pazta or the La Pazta Cafe. The hotel with its Greek Islands atmosphere echoes the mood of its restaurant, La Pazta, where friends gather to enjoy Italian and Swiss cuisine, service is multilingual, the flavors international. The Restaurant La Pazta is open from 3 pm to 11 pm. We serve fresh homemade Pasta made to your order; from our wood fired oven we serve pizza and Lasagne. Your choice includes also Swiss cheese Fondue, Salads, a variety of delicious chicken and beef dishes are prepared after Swiss and Italian recipes. Enjoy some of our classic dishes like Gnocchi verdi con Gorgonzola. Ravioli con funghi, or maybe you will want to check our Specials. Our extensive wine list includes wine from Mexico, Chile, Argentina, USA, Italy, Spain and France. The Cafe La Pazta opens daily a 7 am. It offers fresh brewed filter coffee, Cappuccino or Espresso made with the special Italian coffee Illy. The menu includes fresh pressed fruit juice, Huevos Rancheros, Burritos, as well as Swiss Muesli and fruit for breakfast. The lunch menu offers a variety of salads, pasta dishes, sandwiches made with our homebaked fresh bread. In the afternoon enjoy our full bar, listen to music, surf the internet for free, read a magazine or simply enjoy the ambience.

Jack's Baja Travel Stories. The last cirio in Baja, or the first if you're headed north, is not at Bahia Los Angeles, where Joseph Wood Krutch placed it. It is far to the south, on a ridge high above Rancho San Antonio. It stands alone, across a sere alta plano from another ridge where a line of cirio rise like wisps of smoke made solid in the desert air. That's what comes of touring the peninsula in a private plane or four wheel drive truck, as Krutch did. You arrive at your destination less worse for wear, but with ill-informed conclusions, like the range of the cirio, that strangest of all the strange flora to be seen in Baja California. On a bicycle, you get a close look. But you also need a road and there was no road into the Sierra San Francisco 40 years ago, when Krutch gathered the material for his book, The Forgotten Peninsula. Much of Baja was accessible only by mule or burro. That still holds true for Rancho San Antonio. Since the trans-peninsular highway opened in 1973 many of the old trails that crisscrossed Baja have been built up to the standard of rugged fire roads. Krutch anticipated the change and fretted over the future of fragile ecosystems in the desert, sierra and the coastal salt marshes. Journeys by mule and burro that required several days have been reduced to mere hours. Better roads have encouraged ranchers to expand their herds on what is at best marginal land and allow the army to truck potable water to remote villages high in the sierra. What's good for a half-ton truck also works just as well for a mountain bike. Viewed from a high-flying jet, the heart of the Sierra San Francisco appears as the vast caldera of a silent volcano. Deep arroyos that fall away from ragged peaks and high mesas on their way to the Pacific or the Sea of Cortes hide caves and great murals painted by the hands of a long-vanished people. It remains a wild place and has been designated by the United Nations as a Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site. In the pre-dawn darkness at Vizcaino where the bus dropped me after sailing through my stop at San Ignacio, a handful of truck drivers gathered to watch as I sorted gear and assembled my bike. Where was I going? San Francisco, across to Santa Marta, then to San Ignacio. Santa Marta, one said, and grinned, and held his hand at an angle to indicate the radical descent. They shook their heads. Another crazy gringo. Creosote is the smell of the desert. But here, in one of the driest corners of Baja, the air was suffused with the mineral odour of water. A dense sea fog drifted among the ocotillo and yucca. Traffic was almost at a standstill. Two hours later, when I looked back from the toe of a ridge that climbs into the Sierra, much of the Vizacaino desert was still under a heavy, white blanket. A crew of ranchers was busy filling potholes and they extended a welcome. Tourists seldom venture here, except to view the rock paintings and guide fees are an important source of cash in the Sierra. They were disappointed to hear that I lacked a permit to visit one of the great mural sites, which are in a deep arroyo, three days ride by burro from San Francisco. Within sight of San Francisco, the road passes by a small painted cave. It is closed off to discourage pilfering that plagues such sites, but the fence sagged in one place and I scrambled over. The cave wall is overlaid with images that create an illusion of time in motion. Experts dismiss it as one of the least spectacular, but the site has one unique feature - the representation of a large, black feline. The caves were known to the first settlers, forgotten by the outside world and then rediscovered. Mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner documented his personal adventure with the paintings in The Hidden Heart of Baja. The best popular book on the subject is Harry Crosby's The Cave Paintings of Baja California.. I rolled out my tent on a mesa just below the summit, where a colony of barrel cactus worshipped at the feet of a column of cirio that marched along the lip of a deep arroyo. Far below, a small oasis gleamed. A covey of quail burst from cover and fled before a kestrel that materialized out of the blue. The sun dropped into the Pacific and stars flooded into a sky swept clear of clouds by a brisk December wind. San Francisco is a collection of weathered houses gathered around a one-room school. Santa Marta was six hours away by a narrow trail, and best negotiated on foot with a burro to carry any burden, according to the man who refilled my water bottles. It's for a mule, not for a bicycle, he said. I recalled a story I had heard in San Ignacio. It was a New Year's Day tradition, I had been told, to hike up from Santa Marta. I had a mental picture of well-lubricated celebrants weaving up a steep, narrow trail, and then strolling another 10 km to San Francisco. How tough could it be? Tough enough, if you take a wrong turn. I was well launched on the wrong road before I discovered my error. I found a clear spot on a rocky slope and settled in for another night under the stars. There was much laughter when I returned to San Francisco in the morning for more water. I had stumbled on to an obscure and difficult trail that leads to a ranch hidden in a deep arroyo. The trail to Santa Marta is polished into the bare rock. Narrow, strewn with broken cobbles and cholla spines that punctured my tires, it twisted across a steep slope and down to Rancho San Antonio. The day was spent portaging gear toward a faint line drawn up the far side of the alta plano, where the trail plunges 700 meters down to Santa Marta. I camped in the shelter of a rock wall, at the edge of the ridge. Three dogs crept to my fire. Looking for food, I thought, but they were there to meet their master. From the shadows below came a clatter of hooves. Four burros appeared, urged up the steep, narrow staircase worn deep into the rock. The jefe of Rancho San Antonio, leading a magnificent white mule, followed close behind. Enrique Arce offered a hand that was smooth, hard and cool as stone in leather. The dogs wriggled about his legs as he welcomed me to the ranch that has been in his family for more than 100 years. San Antonio is a dry ranch, he explained. The burros were laden with water drawn from a well in Santa Marta, and brought up once a week over the ancient trail. Owls still called from the shadows when I began my decent, working down the steep, narrow path in relays. Blurred images of wild sheep drawn in red ochre pranced across a sheer wall far below the summit of the pass where contemporary travelers have cut a small shrine into the rock. The valley spread out below, covered in a gray-green nap of cactus and mesquite. Three hours later, I filled my water bottles in Santa Marta and turned on to the only road to Mexico 1. The maps I consulted warned that it was at least as rugged as the way up to San Francisco. What I found was a long down-hill run over a trail of white sand, most of it so firm and smooth that the road might have been concrete. By late afternoon I was standing under a hot shower in San Ignacio, trying to decide between a cold beer or an icy Margarita, feeling my bones absorb the ease and indolence of the oasis. In the morning I loaded my bike on the bus for LaPaz and settled in to a window seat for a day of passive sight-seeing. Here's a sanity test for middle aged men. Take a winter holiday in the hot latitudes, and add a choice: a week in a seaside hotel, or a bicycle ride along a rugged coast, over a mountain pass and into a maze of canyons where military patrols hunt for drug runners. This came to me on the final leg of a three-day ramble through Baja California Sur, as I bounced over sandy washboard toward a rendezvous with a bus that would return me to the comforts of LaPaz. I wished for the cool oasis far behind me in a deep fold of the Sierra Giganta, where the range presses against the soft curve of the Bay of La Paz. Instead, a small truck...

 Guest rooms have air conditioning
 Luggage storage
 Central situation
 Credit cards accepted
 Currency exchange service
 Dinner may be served in the room
 Disabled guests are welcome
 Facsimile services
 Hairdryer
 Access to internet
 Laundry services/washing machine
 Licensed bar
 Pets are accepted
 Private park, garden, courtyard
 Quiet surroundings
 Clock/radio
 Fridge
 Restaurant
 Private/Ensuite bathroom
 TV sets in rooms
 Patio, summer terrace
 Cheques accepted