Rocky Point — Mexican resort is growing but still greeting

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 9, 2008 by Pat Reavy Deseret Morning News

PUERTO PENASCO, Mexico — Nestled in the upper corner of the Sea of Cortez, the once sleepy fishing village of Puerto Penasco, or Rocky Point as it’s known by touristas, continues to transform itself into a major Mexican vacation destination.

But now that the hotels, luxury condos and time shares are being constructed at a wicked pace, what city leaders, merchants, restaurant and club owners hope for most is that tourists will keep coming.

Three years ago, I traveled to Rocky Point and witnessed firsthand a major hotel and recreation boom. In January, I returned to the resort city in the state of Sonora.

A host of new hotels and condos sits along the shoreline from Cholla Bay through Las Conchas and North Beach. A drive through Old Port shows there is even big construction in Rocky Point’s oldest regions. Across from the Sunset Cantina, older hotels such as the Penasco Del Sol have upgraded to compete with the newer, more modern high-rises on Sandy Beach.

Large new homes in Cholla Bay are being built, many of them costing six figures.

Tourists can now bring their golf clubs as the first 18-hole golf course in Rocky Point, Las Palomas, is open and ready for visitors to try out the green links in the middle of the arid desert.

There were 44,875 residents in Puerto Penasco as of the 2005 census. The large majority of them live within relatively close proximity to the coast. Puerto Penasco is actually a large area, nearly 3,800 square miles. But the farther inland into the Sonoran Desert one goes, the less populated the region becomes.

A sunny getaway is almost always guaranteed in Puerto Penasco, an area that receives an average of 2 inches of rain per year. In the summer, day temperatures can rise into the ’90s. During the winter months, the highs are still well above freezing.

But some merchants and cab drivers say they have noticed a decrease in American tourists in recent months. One cab driver, who didn’t want his name published, said he knows a regular visitor from Boston who used to travel to Puerto Penasco almost monthly. Now, it has been several months since his last visit.

The cab driver blamed the tourism slowdown on America’s mortgage crisis. An article in the January edition of Join Us, a Puerto Penasco monthly tourist paper, agreed U.S. financial woes in 2007 were felt south of the border.

Epifanio Salido Pavlovich, head of the Sonora Commission on the Promotion of Tourism, told the paper the economic situation in the United States “had a strong impact” on Penasco. But he also noted Rocky Point had 1.7 million foreign visitors in 2007, up 11 percent from the previous year. About 80 percent of those tourists were from Arizona, he said. Not a surprise, considering Penasco has also been referred to as Arizona’s beach getaway. The drive from downtown Phoenix to Rocky Point is about 3 1/2 hours.

Add the American visitors with vacationers from other parts of Mexico, and Penasco had about 2.1 million tourists in 2007, Pavlovich told the paper.

Still, the cab driver told me that American dollars are needed in Rocky Point.

“It’s not about one being better than the other,” he said. “We need each other.”

Mexico needs the money tourists are willing to spend. And Americans need a place to get away, he said.

Another possible concern is the ever increasing rules at the border, including the new passport law expected to go into effect later this year. Penasco was located for decades in what was known as the “free zone” between Mexico and the United States, meaning those driving into town did not need a special car permit, visas or a picture ID with proof of citizenship, although it was always recommended to carry those items as a precaution.

The free-zone laws, however, are about to expire as the U.S. government tightens security around the Mexican and Canadian borders
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