Slow Baja - Travel Talk With Slow Baja We Visit Zopilotes Ice Cream In San Bartolo BCS

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

In today's Travel Talk with Slow Baja, we sit down with Sheila, the gregarious owner of Zopilotes Ice Cream in San Bartolo BCS. Originally from Salmon Arm, BC, Canada, Sheila, and her husband first visited Baja Sur in 2008. They returned with a fifth-wheel camper in 2009 and bought a house, sight-unseen in 2010. How was the experience of fixing up a home in a country where you don't speak the language? -"there was a lot of swearing and a lot of drinking!" she says with a smile. We stopped by on a sunny afternoon as we drove South from El Triunfo through San Bartolo on our way down to Cabo San Lucas. I let Sheila pick the flavors for me, she returned with a scoop of creamy lime and a scoop of coconut on a beautiful handmade waffle cone. The ice cream was lovely; the creamy lime was just that, a little tang to start followed by a smooth dollop of sweetness, the coconut was a rich and creamy delight. Zopilotes has won Best Ice Cream of the East Cape Competition and is a must-stop destination for ice cream lovers in Baja Sur. Located at Km 128 Carretera Transpeninsular in San Bartolo Baja California Sur and Zopilotes is Slow Baja approved! Enjoy the podcast with Sheila and her 16-year-old employee Kaira, and if you are ever close to San Bartolo, I hope you stop for an ice cream! Visit Zopilotes on Facebook Visit Zopilotes on Instagram

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, do you have a four-wheel drive? Did you always want to see Baja racing up close and personal? You need to join Slow Baja in the Nora Mexican-1000,

April 23rd through 30th, the Safari class is your way to get your street legal four-wheel drive vehicle up close and into the action. You've got to check out the safari class at nora.com. That's www. N-O-R-R-A.com. Hey, this is Michael Emery of Slow Baja, and I am sitting here in, how do you pronounce it? Zopilotes. Zopilote. Hey, this is Michael Emery of Slow Baja, and I'm sitting in San Bartolo, and Zopolete's Ice Cream, Ice Cream, shop and I'm just, I just wolfed down a spectacular cone. It was creamy lime and coconut on a

handmade waffle cone. It was divine. And now we're sitting down to talk about ice cream. So, I have two guests with me, and I've forgotten both their names already. So we're going to start with introducing yourself. I'm Sheila, and this is Kaida. Sheila, this is your shop. This is. And you've already told me you're a little uncomfortable, so we're going to get past that right now. And we're going to just talk about your story. How did you get here? Well, you're from Canada. I'm Canadian. What part of the country?

From British Columbia. Sam and Arm, the town's name, on the Shuswap Lake region of British Columbia. And my husband and I came down here to San Jose about 2008 or seven, something like that, around 2007. And we stayed in a hotel in San Jose and I rented a Jeep and drove around the southern in Baja and checked out everything and really fell in love with the area like immediately and then the following year in 2009 we bought a big fifth-wheel trailer and we pulled that trailer down here and stayed at Verdugo's campground in Los Barrelets for three or so months and went back up to

Canada after our vacation was done and went back to work and just kept thinking about the area and started checking things out on the internet and we happened to notice this little house for sale here in San Bartolo. Although my husband and I couldn't really remember where San Bartolo was, we decided to pursue purchasing the house at a very good price and which we did. So we bought the house site unseen and moved down, bought it in February 2010, I think, and moved down here basically shortly after that. And had you ever heard of the book God and Mr. Gomez or read the book, God, and Mr. Gomez?

No. Do you have anything, did you know anything about construction? Nothing. And I didn't, I've just lately heard about this book, God and Mr. Gomez. It's kind of famous in the 70s. Yeah. Yeah, and so I'm really, now I kind of want to read the book. I probably will be able to associate a lot of things to that book.

Well, the reason I ask is you have your story in the front of your menu, So I have read your story, and I'm glad to be sitting here talking with you about it. But give us a quick taste of what that experience was like. You said a lot of swearing and a lot of drinking. Yeah, it was a lot of swearing and a lot of drinking. It was really difficult, actually, for me. And I think we had some sort of a bad thing happened that year. My mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly.

And just shortly after that, we came down here. And I had a preconceived idea of what, you know, living in my mom. Mexico was going to be. And when I got into this town, I just didn't, it just didn't come true to what was in my mind. I had this sort of a preconceived idea. And of course, I had no Spanish whatsoever. And this town of San Bartolo is fully Spanish speaking. And so it was really, really difficult at first. And, you know, through lots of trial and error, and crying and drinking, we finally ended up happy here, I guess. So introduce your guest. This is Kaida.

She works for me at the ice cream shop, and she's 16 years old. And her family lives on the other side of San Bartolo in a small area called Imposcibly. About a kilometer from here. And quantos a years to familia be being here in San Bartolo? Approximately 28 years. About 28 years, her family has lived in the location, and her dad is actually the local tire mechanic. So he owns a tire shop in San Bartolo,

and a really good family, very honest and lovely, lovely people, and a good, really a good hard worker she is. Bien, bien, how many people are here in San Bartolo? How many people living here? 500, 600, maybe 600, maybe 600. And San Bartolo is a real ranch community at one time. It was called Rancho de San Bartolome. And it was like a big outpost of ranches.

And then, you know, as years went on, it was separated and just became San Bartolo. But it's a lovely, there's a lot of ranching here, lots of fruit. We have something called Ojo de Agua, which is Eye of the Water. And we have a huge freshwater pool that, comes right into the center of town, just on to the Arroyo. And so this is why we're so green and last year in San Bartolo, because we have so much fresh water. 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. How about milk? How about you tell me what's your relationship, the ice cream was before you started this. And you said you're lactose intolerate, so you don't eat your ice cream.

So in Canada, my husband owns a logging truck, and so I do his books, and I've never made ice cream before, but I became a good, I like Pinterest. And so I started looking up things on Pinterest. And my friend, Lawardess, who lives here in San Bartolo, Mexican Lady, we're talking about if I was wanting to start a business here at some point, what would it be? And that's what we came up with, was a little ice cream curio shop. And I was always thinking I would like to have a little coffee shop bakery type idea, but it ended up being ice cream. And that's it.

I never made ice cream before in my life until I opened an ice cream shop. Now I do You know that makes perfect sense to me It makes perfect sense You know I said to Ted yesterday we were in Loretto I said if I ever move to Baja I'm going to open a destination ice cream shop

There you go I know but a destination ice cream shop in San Bartolo is crazy Kaya tell me about making ice cream You like doing mehame? She likes helping out of the ice cream shop lavando los chastees. Washing dishes is her favorite thing. And what's your favorite flavor?

What's to subor more favorite. Chocolate? I love chocolate. And what's your biggest seller? You said you won the best ice cream of the East Cape. Was that a single flavor? Was that a general domination of the entire ice cream category?

Yes. So we, it's across the board anyway. So it's like one restaurant might have like tamales and one might have shrimp and, you know, whatever you're famous for. And all the restaurants go into one, not now because of COVID, but pre-COVID, into one location. And 300 people purchase tickets and come and taste the food that these restaurants offer. And so those 300 ticket holders then vote for second and third place. So it's not categorized.

just across the board. So I'd say that our KSEL mass popular, el-sabor mass popular. Salted caramel is like, I think, one of the front runners this year. And then the other one that I'm making right now, we call it it's golden milk made with turmeric, and that is a really, really popular too.

And how do you source your ingredients? I have a shopper that, a guy that does all my shopping, for me and he goes into La Paz, mostly. Sometimes like even Costco or something in San Jose, but mostly it's La Paz and he knows where all the places are. I don't have watered buffalo though. I'm sorry I told you about the watered buffalo milk.

I'm going to try to make it now. And who are your customers? My customers are, so San Bartolo is built on an arroyo, which leads all the way to Los Borales. And so one big adventure for the people that live in Los Borrelia, and the people visiting quad rental people, they'll come up for a day trip on the Arroyo and in their either jeeps or quad machines or razors,

and they'll come up here and stop. And people passing also and the people of the town as well. All right. Well, I've enjoyed my ice cream. Tell me how people can find you on the internet. Okay, so I'm on Facebook at zopis.zambartolo. Can you spell that? What do you say Z?

Z. Z. Z. You can say Z-O-P-I-S-D-S-Bartolo. Zopis dot San Bartolo. That's Facebook? That's Facebook, yeah. And Instagram as well. And Instagram as well.

All right, we'll have that in the show notes. It's been a delight to be here. Next time, Kaya's going to talk more. Proxima based two bass of platico and mass. All right. Well, thanks for the chat and thanks for the ice cream. It's really been lovely, and we'll see you soon on the next trip with Slow Baja. Yeah, thank you very much.

Slow Baja's wardrobe is provided by Taylor Stitch. I was lucky enough to wear test some items on my 3,000-mile Baja XL trip, the vertical jacket, the California shirt, which is a beautiful flannel shirt. I call it the Baja California shirt, and some white oak, beautiful salvaged denim jeans. Put all that stuff on to make me look good in Baja, and I never took it off. I was wearing that stuff for 10 days straight. That vertical jacket is a handsome, handsome jacket, in the truck, under the truck, at dinner. Taylor Stitch, clothes that are meant to wear in, not out.

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