Slow Baja - Talk Baja Founder Ron Gomez Hoff Shares His Love For San Quintin

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Ron Gomez Hoff is the founder of the website and Facebook page Talk Baja. A Southern California native, Hoff fell in love with Baja as a teenager on a scouting trip in 1968. After high school, a stint in the Navy had him operating nuclear powerplants on submarines. When he left the Navy, he returned to Long Beach and joined his family business running testing laboratories in the oil and gas industry. With his father's passing, he expanded the labs into full environmental certification, including drinking water, wastewater, hazardous waste, and air emissions. A consulting project had Hoff creating computer databases which led to a project in Mexico City. He enjoyed the people and the culture, but Mexico City was too large for his liking. Recently divorced and seeking change, Hoff headed to Baja and rented a house on Rosarito Beach. He realized that he could work from anywhere with an internet connection, so why not a beach in Baja? While attending a weekend cooking class in Tijuana, he met the love of his life, Christina. The two married and began exploring communities South of Rosarito. They visited San Quintin and fell in love with the nearby fishing village of La Chorera. They loved the physical beauty of the location but were amazed by the beautiful people; Hoff says they are some of the finest people he's ever met. When the local building supply owner found out they had bought a property and began building a house, he extended credit to them immediately.  Gestures of trust and generosity were repeated over and over by their new neighbors. As a result, Hoff says he doesn't feel like a foreigner; on the contrary, "I feel like we've always been here. The people make you feel like you belong here." Embraced by his community, he has become an advocate for moving to Baja and a cheerleader for San Quintin and the region. 

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip. Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California. Road and Recreation Atlas. It's a 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation

guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmarkmaps.com. Hey, this is Michael Emery of Slow Baja, and I am on a Zoom call today with Ron Gomez-Hoff. He's in San Catan. It's a little garbled. We're going to talk about how he got to Baja, how he met his wife, and how he, you know, when he's not fishing, he manages to be the admin for Talk Baja. So Ron, take it away. Good morning. Listen, I appreciate you invited me on, Michael. And just to be clear, my legal name is Ron Hoff. But everybody here calls me Ron Gomez-Hoff, and I have my wife to blame for that. She stuck me with the Gomez nickname in a cooking class

when we met in Tijuana about 16 plus years ago. And so I decided just to add that Gomez onto my name on Facebook, and it stuck. And it's a funny story because we'll be in town and we'll be shopping. My wife, she doesn't call me Ron. She calls me Gomez. And so we'll be shopping. People see me, and when they see that I answer to the name Gomez, it turns a lot of Well, I hope Gomez is a term of endearment there.

Good, good, good. Hey, so doing some research on you, how did you get from trained nuclear power plant operator to oil and gas guy to Baja? How did that whole plan in a couple of minutes play out? Okay, well, I'll try to give you the condensed version. I, up until just a few years ago, I was doing a lot of work for the oil industry. I owned testing laboratories in California. And we did a lot of work for the oil industry. And even when I made the decision to sell part of the testing business away and to free myself up,

I stayed with consulting business. and I was doing a lot of consulting work for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Texaco, and others. And that took me to different parts of the world. I did some work in South America, did some work in Asia, did some work here in Mexico. And on the side of that, I was building, I learned to build computer databases. And it, although you asked me, you asked me about my nuclear training, didn't you all? maybe I should back up. Yes, I did graduate from the Navy School of Nuclear Engineering. I was a nuclear power plant operator on board the USS Long Beach. They later sent me back to school

for chemistry and Radcon training. I was doing the chemistry on the after reactor of USS Long Beach. But when I got out of the Navy, I went to work in the family business. My father owned testing laboratory in Long Beach, California. And he passed away in 1988 from cancer, and I took over the business and expanded that. We opened up laboratories on the coast and up in Bakersfield, which Bakersfield would become our main office later. And we took the lab to full environmental certification doing drinking water, wastewater, hazardous waste, air emissions testing beyond just the oil industry. And thanks to a divorce I went through in the mid-90s, I decided to get out of the business,

went just into the consulting side of the business, doing work for Exxon and others. And I was also building computer databases. And I was hired by a company in Mexico City to do some work for them back in, I think was 2001. And I enjoyed my time there. In fact, they actually wanted to keep me on full time, but I didn't like Mexico City. It was too much like the worst of L.A. So I knew that I had spent some time in Baja, California, and I thought, you know, I can do this from living in Baja.

And so just on a, almost on a whim, I mean, I literally made the decision a matter of a few days. I moved down to the Rosary Beach area, rented a house on the beach. and it was just doing my consulting work from the house there in Rosarita. When I had to, I would travel up north to the Santa Barbara area, which is where the majority of my offshore clients were. And in the meantime, I took a cooking class in Tijuana just to have something to do on my Saturdays, and it was there I would meet the love of my life, Christina, who would later become my wife. And we've been together for 16 years.

And we were going to build a house outside of Rosarito, but then we thought about it. We decided maybe we wanted to move a little bit further south. So we spent our weekends exploring the coastline moving south from Encinada. We first looked at it ended up and part south. And when we got here to the San Quintin area, we found a few areas that we liked, and we liked the sense of the feeling of the community here. but when we stumbled on to La Chorera, it's a little small fishing village, about 15 miles, uh, listen to about 12 miles west of San Quintin here on the coast, fronting San Martina Island.

We just, we just fell in love with this area, just with the volcanoes behind us, and the coastline here is sandy beaches intertwined between lots and lots of tide pools. And we just, we just love the look and feel of this area. And so I found out who owned the land here, made a deal with him. Got some property and we built our house here. And we've been here since 2008. Well, let me stop you there. You can get a sip of coffee and take a breath.

But you've become quite a cheerleader for that town. And I'm wondering, it seems to me not having seen it in 20 years, it seems to me that it's a very slow Baja kind of place. It seems like the pace of life and the people are quite slow, kind, and friendly. And are you worried about, I hate to say, ruining that, but do you have any concerns with your cheerleading for your town? No, because, you know, when I felt, you touched on a lot of what we fell in love with down here. San Quintin is

It's a farming community That Also has It's It's probably like any other growing town of this size But you know What keeps

San Quintin San Quintin is the people here They are some of the most decent people I have ever met my life You know when I When we first bought land here and we were starting to build. I mean, it was amazing. We would go into the stores

and when they figured out that you're actually building here. I mean, I had instant credit. They just said, Ron, just signed for it. And at months end, you can come in and we'll settle up. And that amazed me because who does that today? But that, I mean, I literally would run up 10, 15,000 bills in some stores in one month. And they just never blinked an eye. And these guys didn't know me. They just met me months before, and here they are giving me thousands of dollars in credit. But what it did, though, is it created a relationship between us and this community that I've never experienced before in my life. I mean, we don't feel like foreign, foreign or even, although my wife is a Mexican citizen, she's from Nayiti. We feel like we've always lived here in San Quintin.

We feel like we are natives of this area. The people here make you feel like you belong here. And it's something that too many people don't get to see here in San Quintin because they see San Quintin is just a place to stop and get gas or roadside taco or maybe spend an overnight on your way north or south. And you really don't get to. to appreciate what this community really is. The heart of Sancontinent is not on the Trans-Penetional Highway.

It's off the highway. And you need to spend time here to really get to know it. And what I've done here in promoting this area, I'd like to believe I've really helped this area. And I do believe so because I get a lot of feedback from the people here and the businesses here and they tell me that they appreciate my work. because sanctine, because it's, the harder sanctine is not on the highway, any development here is not going to change what this region really is.

Right. I think that's the most important thing is geographically just a little bit out of the way, but just a little bit out of the way. And that's what's keeping it beautiful, I guess. Can you take me back to Ron? Did you grow up with the love of Baja? Where did Baja come into your life? As a young boy, we had made several trips growing up, mainly to Tijuana a couple of times to Ensenada. But what really gelled it for me was when I was, I believe I was 13 years old. I was a member of a Boy Scout troop in Long Beach, California.

And our scout master, man by the name of Bruce Barron, he was a geologist who worked for my father, actually. The guy was just an amazing. And he took a subgroup of our troop, I think, oh, we were probably eight of us. We made a trip down here for, I believe it was eight or nine days. that was back in gee, that would have been, I'm going to date myself, back in 1968.

And we spent a week down here, we started, we're hitting the coast south of Encinada, and I believe at Porto Santo Tomas, at La Bocana. We started there, and we were driving this, he was in this old suburban,

and he had another guy in, a Jeep following and they were pulling a trailer with with some small motorcycles, some surfing gear, fishing gear, everything we needed for our adventure. And we just started exploring the coastline from Labokana, south, moving south. And I believe we ended up at, we ended up at Enda. But over that week, eight days time,

we had so many incredible adventures. I mean, the things that I experienced that week that I still remember fondly today. And that's what was real. The real seed for me is in that I wanted one day to get back to this place. And so I made it happen. Are you still amazed that, you know, having grown up in Southern California, I don't know what the current population is. It's 20 plus million people in Southern California, I think.

Are you amazed at how quiet and how desolate and how rapidly you can find that in Baja, just a half hour, 45 minutes south of the border? Oh, it's amazing. In fact, it happens to me every time. Every time I cross the border heading south, I just can't help it. You breathe a sigh of relief. It's like you take a burden off you. It's just a feeling that I can't compare to anything else. You know, today I will turn 65 years old here in about a little over a week, Mike.

And today I can honestly say I feel younger today than when I was 40 years old. I can't explain it what this place does to you. it is something really, really magical. Well, it sounds like you've found that fountain of youth, which is good, clean living, and great community, and sun, and sea. And so here, here, and congratulations and happy birthday. And I hope on my next trip down, I get to pour a shot of tequila Fortaleza for you. And Yeho, since you're officially old, even though you're super young, we can celebrate in person.

Hey, do you have, can you tell the folks listening on Slow Baja a little bit about your area? I'm not sure that everybody knows the history of the San Catene area. And then I think the most interesting thing there is the weather. I'm a San Francisco and like my fog. But can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. Well, look, Sancteen is a really interesting place. It was initially named, it was discovered by Cabrillo back in the, I believe it was early 1600s.

And he sailed into what he called the Bay of the Possession. He called it Baye de la Possession, which would later be renamed to San Quintin. But even though he discovered it then, there was only a few natives living around the, the bay actually they would just subsistence living around the bay and and so when Cabrillo left really not much changed for over 200 years it pretty much stayed the same and then it was a group of english colonists who signed a concession agreement with the federal government of mexico in the late 1800s and they they moved uh families, equipment, they even, in fact, they installed what would be the first rail line here on the peninsula in, I believe the 1880s, early 1880s.

And that rail line was meant to move products like wheat that they were going to grow in the valley to the bay to transfer to ship's for shipment. And then they also installed a salt mining operation. and such, but their downfall, contrary to what some people believe that they left because it didn't rain for a couple of years. And that simply isn't true. I learned that the reason they left was it was the coming Mexican revolution. Because in terms of their concession required them to colonize this area. In other words, the Mexican government gave them.

this land so they would subdivide it and then attract people to call it to populate the area. And they didn't do that. They just kept it all for themselves getting out of the land what they could. And then when the revolution was coming, which was, we know, was over land control. They saw the writing on the wall. They knew that they would they would lose it all. So they picked up everything and left. But they did leave it. one thing that the engine from the train systems they ran while being unloaded to

the barge they lost control of it and it actually fell into the bay and it's still there still down in the mud of the bay. I saw it still there. Yeah, so Sancantine would go through a couple decades more of relative quiet

not much happened here and then believe or not It was some Mexican families living in Los Angeles who would become the real colonists here. They moved down here in the late 20s, early 30s, and it was about seven or eight families from L.A., Mexican families who had been for decades living in L.A., they moved back down here, and they started what would be San Quinteen today. And you know, this weather, the area here, Michael, is incredible. The weather here, though, it really changes based on your location because we are out here on the coast here at La Chorreda. And our weather here is really, it's even mild for San Diego, I believe. Because I do daily weather reports, and I see the weather in San Diego, and here on the coast, we are,

I would say in summertime, we are 70% of the time, we are a couple of degrees cooler than San Diego. It's just one of the anomalies of this area here. However, in the valley, on the other side of the volcanoes, it can get a little warmer. But in the valley, it's relatively dry, warm in summer, and cool in winters. But here on the coast, it's incredible weather. We love it all year round. And we'll, we joke that in summertime, you've got to close the windows in the evening because it gets too cool. And in the winter, we'll be barbecueing with friends in T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.

It's just, it doesn't, the weather here doesn't really change that much. But we love it. We love it here. You know, we can't wait to drive our old Land Cruiser down to Baja. And when we go, we go with Baja bound insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use, Baja Bound Insurance, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, Ron, we're back, and I just want to ask you about, I've seen some photos of you, fishing, and it looks like the fishing where you are is pretty damn good.

It is. You know, San Quintin is blessed with a lot of volcanic activity in its history. because it turns out volcanoes are a critical element in creating marine life, active marine life, because it provides really some of the basic nutrients to create all of the marine species of fauna that, for example, clams and abalone and lobsters. need to to populate to what to highly poppy an area and so what it does is it creates

it creates the perfect environment so when you have a healthy clam population oyster population muscles population abalone population so on so forth

you're also going to have a very healthy fish population because it's just it's just a complete food chain. And so added to that, because of the volcanic activity in the past in this region, it's easy to see with your eyes. You can see all the dormant volcanoes here rising on the skyline. But underwater, there are lots of volcanoes that never managed to break the surface. In fact, San Martina in front of us is one big volcano, adorant volcano. But there's also several underwater peaks that volcanoes that didn't quite make it to the surface.

And so, but those points, those high points underwater attract a lot of fish. And so it's, you can just, you can just hang around any of those well-known fish points here, high points. And you'll have a great day of fishing. And so is there, there seems to me to be. be both fishing from shore in some locations. Yes. And then obviously if you're out on a boat, you have those opportunities to get to the places you're talking about where it seems to me you're knocking them dead.

Oh, well, you know, but I have to be honest with you. I give 99.999% of the credit for any of those fish that you've seen me post online, I give all of that credit to a fishing guru here whose name is Juan Cook. He's a good friend of mine. He is, without a doubt, the best fishing guide captain I have ever met in my life. The guy is so incredibly knowledgeable, Michael, I'll tell you. One sure way you can always know when you're with a good fishing captain, when you're out of the water and there's a lot of other boats out there

and you're the only one catching fish, that tells you you're with a pretty good fishing captain. And I've had that happen several times with Captain Juan. He is just an amazing, amazing fishing captain. And I really recommend to any of your listeners that if they ever get the chance, spend the day with Juan. He's not only is he a great fishing guy. guy. The guy has got more stories than anyone I've ever met about fishing. And he has you

laughing all day long. He's a lot of fun to spend a day out in the water with. I feel honored to consider him my friend. Sounds like I'm going to have to mic him up and go out for a fishing trip and get a podcast out of it to boot. That would be a really good one. I suggest you do that. Hey, can you tell me if the rumor is true that all the oysters that are labeled point raised these days are actually coming out of Baja? I can't confirm of the night, but I do know that's happening. This area provides, in fact, we work with one of the companies up there. you may have heard of them, Drake's Bay. Sure, yeah.

But I'm sure though, Drake's Bay, they do disclose that their oysters are here from Bayefalsa. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And they're good people. I consider them good friends. Yeah. Again, I don't want to create controversies. That's just a joke going around Tamales Bay,

which is my go-to spot for oysters, just north of San Francisco here. Hey, we're going to. You know what it is? You know what it is? It's because I, I've tried oysters all my life, and I never liked them, to be honest with you, until I got to here. I got here to Sancontinia because it's the way they raise their oysters. It's not just, it's just not that they have really high quality water, really pristine water.

The fact that their oysters never touch the bay floor. because my experience has been, and I've even gotten oyster connoisseurs to admit this to me, that when eat oysters from other areas, they'll admit to you that afterwards is always just a, even if it's just a slight, there's an aftertaste you feel of like mud in your mouth. It's the mud on the bay floor. The oysters here never touch the bay floor. And because oysters are filters are filters, they're by-vales, When you grow oysters laying on the bottom of the bay, you know, when they're filtering mud 24 hours a day for a year and a half, two years, you're going to get some of that taste on the oysters.

The oysters here never touched the bay bottom. They use different style of growing their oysters here. And I think it's one of the keys to why their oysters here are so delicious. You know, there's something we're going to stay on this here, but I'd really love to get your opinion living there. it's my humble observation that Baja is sort of like the new Mediterranean. There just seems to be so much amazing food being grown, wine being grown and made, and then incredible seafood and shellfish that's coming out of local waters there, beautifully, cleanly, thoughtfully.

What can you tell me about the change in the cuisine over the last 20 years in Baja? Yeah, I've seen it. We know what some people call, you know, the Baham Med. I'm actually friends with Harvey Placentia in Tijuana, and he's opened up a number of restaurants. And it is, I actually think he's been one of the pioneers leading that change. He didn't do it obviously all on his own, but there has been actually a real trend in, And it's a growing trend in this new type of cuisine. And I love it because I spent time on the mainland in Mexico.

And while there are some dishes here that are similar or the same as mainland, there's a lot of food you eat here that is just not, you won't find it on the mainland. And I am really enjoying this time period because I've seen a lot of it happening in, for example, Guadalupe Valley, Valle Guadalupe. But it's also you're seeing in other areas like just here in San Quintin, we've got a number of, I think, really high-end restaurants that are starting to incorporate this type of cuisine into their menus as well. And I love it.

I absolutely love it. In fact, here in La Choreta, just in this last year, we have had, let me think, one, two of them. We've had probably six small open-air restaurants open up here down on the beach areas and just serving just fresh seafood that's, I mean, literally right out of the sea. And they are not just selling fish tacos. They're starting to experiment with some of these types of plates and dishes. And I find it fascinating. And I consider myself fortunate that I can try any of those just walking distance from

from my home. Well, following up on that good fortune that you found yourself in and your fountain of youth that you've discovered, do you have any advice for folks who might be considering making the move, jumping out of the rat race, retiring to Baja, what have you, and not doing the sort of more traditional stuff, you know, that you passed by to find your spot in La Chorera? Well, absolutely. You know, I made the move down here when I was still working. And it was, it was challenging, but I made it work. And I know a lot of other people who have done the same. But today, Michael, I really believe this is the perfect time. You don't need to wait for retirement. Because what the pandemic has done, it's created so many new opportunities to work. work online that with a good internet connection, you literally can live just about anywhere you want in the world and work. And so you don't need to just wait for retirement.

You can make the move today if you can find a job opportunity to allow you to work online or at least most of your time online. I think those opportunities today are better than ever in our history. But for retirees, my God, I just don't see what the attraction could be apart from, you know, the need to want to be close to your kids or grandkids. And I understand that. But, you know, here and especially in this region, we're in northern Baja, even if your grandkids, kids are, you know, like minor in Bakers, my grandsons in Bakersfield. And still that's less of the

day's drive or what we do is we often will meet in San Diego, things like that. But my God, you know, life here in retirement, it's like heaven. I mean, I just, I just can't understand any of rationale beyond just wanting to be close to your kids. And I understand that. But if you you can find a way to make it work with your kids and grandkids and still live down here, I wouldn't give it a second thought. Your money goes a lot farther. You can afford to live in a place that you can never afford in the United States. And then the lifestyle here, it's really what I think most people envision their retirement to be. It's slower. It's kickback. You have time for friends down here, which, you know, you never seem to have time

for friends up in north of the border you're just always too busy here you always have time to spend with good friends and i just i just couldn't imagine living anywhere else yeah and so you know on that note i i always like to ask people on the talking on slow baha to explain baha to people who haven't been there and explain the people of baha and i think you just touched on that a little and i'd love for you to elaborate on that that the people and the making time for friendships and conversation and enjoying the smaller moments, whether it's a cold beer or a sip of tequila or an opportunity to grab a taco or what have you. Can you just unwind that a little bit and then we'll wrap up here.

Sure. You know, it's so true, Michael. I don't know how else to best explain it than just to give you a good example. You know, when I was working up in California, and you'd run across a friend in the grossest door at Home Depot somewhere, and you'd say, you know, we've got to get together. Yeah, let's do a barbecue sometime. And so you both get out your phones and you start looking through your calendars and, you know, gee, we're in May. You know, I might have something open, a weekend opening July maybe or August we can do it because it just seems like in the U.S. today with people's busy lives and their kids have busy lives, it's just hard to schedule anything. You know, here just last week, I ran across two friends.

the hardware store. This was probably about 9.30 in the morning. And at one day and afternoon, they were at my house and they had probably brought eight more friends. And so by one o'clock, we had a full-fledged barbecue going on that lasts until about 10 that night. And, you know, that was the same day in just a couple of hours. And that's not unusual, Mike. That's something that it just goes with a lifestyle here. You always have time for friends. And people here, they make their friendships a real priority in their lives. And they see their friends as an extension of their families.

And they give them the time and priority that they deserve. And I love that. And it reflects. And you see that reflect in the feeling of this community and the lifestyle here. It's one of the things that I love about San Quintin. All right. Well, we're going to wrap it up, Ron, but I appreciate you making some time. People can find you at TalkBaha, which we didn't even talk about today. Talk Baja on Facebook, correct? Yes. Yeah, we're on Facebook. We also have the TalkBaha.com website, which we're starting to build more. But we actually have a lot of other subgroups and pages, but we can talk about that another time. Because I'd love to, I'd love to to talk to you about a new project I'm working on, which is the San Quintin Travel Guide, because San Quentin just became a municipality, and they've actually asked me to help them build

the travel guide. So it's a project I'm really excited about, but we can do that on another show. Yeah, well, San Catene is Flo Baja AF, as the kids say. You've hired Dante Huerta, which I think will be great help to you. And I do want to talk to you about your other pages and other areas that you're helping to shed a little light on because Catavina is a place that I love and I'm I'm looking to you where I need to spend some time in my old land cruiser. But Ron, it's been a real treat getting you on the show and I can't wait to see you in person. Happy birthday. And let's talk soon about some of your other projects and other places that you're trying to shed a little tourism light on. Well, dude. Just let me know, Mike. And my bar is open anytime.

Well, you don't have to invite me twice. Hey, one more time. Best place for people to find you on the internet. How do you like people to get you on? On the internet, probably go to, if they're just online, they have access to the internet. talkbaha.com. If they're on an app and they're phone and they're in Facebook, look up TalkBaha. Talk Baja on Facebook, 55,000 people strong. You can find Ron right there at the top. He's easy to reach and he will get back to you.

So, hey, Ron Gomez-Hoff, thank you so much for spending some time with Slow Baja today. My pleasure, Michael. I enjoy talking with you and hope to see you soon down here at my bar. Thanks, Ron. Slow Baja's wardrobe is provided by Taylor Stitch. Responsibly built for the long haul, Taylor Stitch makes clothes that wear in, not out. Wherever your adventure takes you, Taylor Stitch has you covered. Check them out at tailorstitch.com.

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