Sitting at the border for four hours, the equivalence of the entire trip, moving an inch a minute with no bathrooms in sight can push any sane person over the edge. But it never used to be like this. Rocky Point was mine, my family's vacation spot that no one knew about. The secret haven that people from Tucson and Phoenix would frequent during their Fall break or their Easter vacation is now being gutted and turned into a tourist town attracting people from all over to overrun the small beach town.
My parents tell me stories of their hippie days, when they would drive down to Puerto Peñasco and the place they'd stay was wherever their Pinto got stuck in the sand and they'd set up camp. This is hard to even imagine, as Sandy Beach is now crowded with high-rise resorts accompanied with swim-up bars, sushi restaurants, golf courses and, of course, paved roads.
When I was little, the beach vendors used to offer necklaces with "Your name on a grain of rice" for $1, now they offer henna tattoos for $20 or more. Nights used to be spent around a fire on the beach or going tide-pooling, discovering inking octopi, sea cucumbers, starfish and sea anemones. Now we go out to the bars, dance our asses off and top off the night with some street vended tacos. My mom and I tried to go tide pooling last year and couldn't find much. Rocky Point, or Puerto Peñasco, is on the Northeastern shore of the Sea of Cortez and used to be a fishing village, but now the sea is mostly fished out and the shrimping fleet has greatly declined. Is this anyone's fault? Should the tourism be blamed for this or is it the course of nature? I couldn't say, but I do know that the tourism is not slowing down whatsoever.
There are plans for an airport that will fly in people from California, turning Rocky Point into the next Cancun. There are rumors of a Señor Frogs night club coming to town that will take an already wild and crazy Spring Break to the next level, most certainly a Girls Gone Wild gold mine for the next shoot. How could this be bad for a town, right? Why wouldn't the citizens of Rocky Point welcome the money brought in by tourists with open arms? Well they don't really have a choice since tourism is the second largest economic factor in Rocky Point.
As I sit in a line of hundreds of cars, and watch kids that look six years old walk by with their hands out, palms up, waiting for one of us rich Americans to at least give him a quarter or something, reality stares me in the face. I often wonder how it would be if I was born and raised there. Who would I be, the girl dressed up as a pirate entertaining people on a booze cruise or the lady with a baby on her hip, and two toddlers peddling chicle? I'll never know, because I'll just be traveling to Rocky Point for leisure amongst the millions of other Americans, because if you build it they will come. And it has certainly been built.
Reach the reporter at adprice4@asu.edu
