Loreto Feels Like the Ultimate Baja Getaway - Pt 3
By Tom Kagy | 20 Feb, 2025

The shady promenade and sunny plaza of downtown Loreto provide a quaint contrast to our modern resort experience.

Downtown Loreto is surprisingly gracious in its layout. 

At the town center is the historic old Loreto Mission fronted by a broad cobblestone promenade shaded by lush trees shaped into arches.  The promenade leads to a traditional civic plaza with a kiosko, a raised, covered platform, toward the east end, and a small city hall that doubles as a museum and tourist office on the west.  

Loreto Plaza is lined with three posadas (inns) and several restaurants and cafes, making it a memorable spot from which to soak up atmosphere.  We had one of our lunches at the Mita Gourmet restaurant on the east end of the plaza which, true to its name, served up dishes that attained gourmet levels in flavor and texture, especially with chicken.  Posada de las Flores on the south side of the plaza offers an ensemble of tables that provide a sense of being at the center of the plaza's somnolent street life.  Virtually all Mexican towns have civic plazas, but few are as aesthetic and pleasant as Loreto's.  

Itching for more sights and sounds of terra incognita, we spent an afternoon driving into the mountains to visit San Javier, the surprisingly remote location of California's oldest Spanish mission.  The road to San Javier turns west off Highway 1 a half mile south of downtown Loreto.   Much of the 20 or so miles to the old mission is winding and mountainous.  Through aggressive slaloming we managed to reach San Javier in about 30 minutes. 

San Javier is barely a village, with a single road flanked by some unpaved parking, a souvenir shop and a single cafe-restaurant.  We were disappointed to find the restaurant closed at 3:00 when we would have enjoyed a drink at a table in the shade.  The only thing open was the area's marquee edifice, old Mission San Francisco de Xavier de Viggé-Biaundó ("high lands in the height of a ravine" to the native Indians).  A mission had originally been built in 1699 in present-day Loreto as the first of 27 missions built along El Camino Real all the way up to Sonoma, California.

A sense of the mission's historic precedence is established by the fact that the mission in Santa Barbara wasn't built until 1722 and the one in San Diego not until 1769.  The mission was moved to a spot near the present San Javier mission in 1702 due to the lack of a reliable source of drinking water, then rebuilt at its current spot in 1710 after the original was shut down after an Indian revolt.  Those Spanish Jesuits were often resented by local peoples who didn't like their efforts to eradicate local religions and customs.

We were impressed by the mission's size, solidity and structural adornments, not knowing to what extent the mission had been improved and refurbished during the early part of the last century after having become entirely deserted by 1827.  Inside is a magnificent hall of worship with stained glass, elaborate bas relief and other amenities one expects to see only in far grander churches in Spain like, say, Seville Cathedral or Barcelona Cathedral.

We were the sole visitors loiitering on mission grounds when we spotted a lone merchant manning a picnic table on which was arranged small bottles of olive oil and honey.  The bottles contained only local produce, he assured us.  A taste test seemed to bear out his assertion.  That was augmented by the local lore about San Javier being home to the world's oldest olive tree.  Enough stray dollars were dug out to buy a half dozen bottles that fell under the 3-ounce limit for carry-on liquids.