La Paz is the historical capital of southern Baja, a prosperous city of 200,000. Wikipedia says that its citizens also enjoy the highest per capita income in Mexico, of US$27 a day. Hernan Cortez visited its bay in the 16th century, and pirates and adventurers careened their ships there. Early Franciscan missionaries were bloodily repelled by the native Pericu. It got its real beginnings, though, in the 18th century as the marketplace for pearls harvested in the southern Sea of Cortez. Then, in the 19th century, as trade blossomed with the Philippines, China and Japan, it became an important commercial center.

Our first impression of La Paz, for all its storied past, was of a "clown town". As Mariposa wound down the long channel past the city, bright colors leapt at us out of the desert background. Giant blue waterslides appeared to drop children into the bay. The steel skeleton of an unfinished church dome intruded on the skyline like a capricious balloon; the bandstand on the malecon was a little disproportionately tall. Palm trees lining the cityfront seemed out of place in a land of cacti and low palo verde trees.

We anchored off the town in El Mogote, an area across the channel from the Marina de la Paz. After inflating our dinghy, we headed out in the choppy water of the bay to visit town. This half-mile crossing can be tough in a small dinghy because of a localized wind phenomenon called "Coromuel." During a common weather condition (like every night during some seasons) in which the Sea of Cortez has lower atmospheric pressure than the Pacific, air is funneled northeast through a gap north of the Sierra de la Laguna mountain range southwest of La Paz. This wind can begin blowing in the afternoon and run all night long, well into the morning. Often opposing the current, this wind can kick up quite a chop and in our case made our little dinghy rides ridiculously long and wet. Fortunately, the water is bathtub-warm.

We spent a week or so in La Paz, enjoying some meals out and the best agua fresca we've ever tasted-and we know from agua fresca. The downtown area sports some excellent restaurants and a lot of shopping. The cathedral dates back to 1817, and underneath the wildly uneven cement of the sidewalks lie flat, low-fired red bricks from the first attempts at paving the city. The old brick buildings look straight out of a Wild West movie set, while some of the houses are made of broad, old-growth planks obviously shipped down from the Pacific Northwest a hundred or more years ago.

We visited the city's rather old-fashioned museum, which had exhibits from Baja's prehistory, geology and history as part of Mexico. There were giant sharks' teeth, a sabre-toothed tiger skull, a diorama of lightly clad natives hunting and gathering, and some very interesting displays of Precolumbian burial practices, which varied widely throughout the peninsula. Giant salt crystals and copper ore presage the modern mineral economy, and plant fossils show how in past epochs the peninsula was quite lush. There is also an exhibit about US attempts to take Baja California from Mexico, and valiant resistance from the patriots. There was also a recent exhibit of photographs and material from Baja's ranchos, including beautiful iron- and leatherwork.

In certain ways La Paz reminded me of Southern California. Perhaps it was just the light, or the occasional stucco bungalow, or the Washington apples in the supermarket, or the rolling "California Stops" at the oft-ignored stop signs. Before our visit I had never thought of the connection between the US side of California and the Mexican side at all. The national border somehow divided the land in a way impermeable to my imagination. But our stay in La Paz made it clear that "Baja California" and "Alta California" are of a piece, with a shared history and geography generally forgotten.