Weekend Escape: Baja California : Rosarito Reverie : He Holed Up at This Seaside Hotel, Where the Ocean Views Are Long and the R&R; Easy

For most of my adult life, one of the nomadic notions that hovered near the top of my to-do list--somewhere below a monthlong golfing orgy in Scotland and a bit above a banzai run to the Gilroy Garlic Festival--was a weekend holed up in the Rosarito Beach Hotel.

Apart from simply liking the sound of the name, I thought the idea seemed worthwhile for several reasons:

--The hotel is probably the best-known lodging in all of Baja norte , with a history that goes back to the 1920s, when there was nothing in that neighborhood of any note except the hotel;

--A bunch of old Hollywood types used to sneak out of town to stay there in relative anonymity: Orson Welles, Lana Turner, Mickey Rooney, Rita Hayworth, among others;

--The air is clear, the beach is inviting and the view of the Coronado Islands is lovely;

--They make great street-side tacos in town;

--You can go as a couple and get romantic, as a group and get crazy or on your own--as I did--and happily vegetate and relax in depth.

--The tropical drink list in one of the hotel bars--the Beachcomber--is about the size of the local phone book and,

--There’s a certain romance about getting not just out of town for the weekend, but out of the country.

From my home in Santa Ana, it’s about a two-hour drive to the trademark gabled arch entryway of the hotel, including a quick stop in San Ysidro for Mexican auto insurance, which isn’t mandatory but can save you immense headaches in the event of a south-of-the-border fender-bender.

First, however, came a lunch stop at the peaceful early-19th-Century Casa de Bandini in San Diego’s Old Town for a quick enchilada and a margarita at fountain-side in the garden.

The drive from there to Rosarito isn’t exactly a straight shot; you have to snake your way around the edge of downtown Tijuana and follow the signs that say “Rosarito-Ensenada Cuota.” This is the toll road, beautifully constructed and paved, that will get you to Rosarito in about 20 minutes. It’s worth every penny of the $2.30 toll. The alternative is the “libre” road that can be hell on your shocks and nerves.

Located at the southern end of Boulevard Benito Juarez in the approximately two-mile-long town of Rosarito, the Rosarito Beach Hotel is the planet around which orbits many of the more tourist-friendly businesses and restaurants in the neighborhood.

The hotel wears its age gracefully, if not perfectly. The tile work on the walls and floors of the lobby and adjacent areas remains lovely, and the restaurants and bars are comfortable and informal, but the moderately priced rooms are no more glamorous than a decent motel’s.

However, if you book a room with an ocean view (mine was on the fifth floor of the newer tower section), the attraction of the spot becomes refreshingly obvious. There is a long, long, long and clear ocean view directly to the west, broken only by a small seal rock just offshore and, to the north, the rolling Coronado Islands. The late afternoon sun is dazzlingly bright and the sunsets are often blazingly spectacular.

They blaze less brightly through the tinted glass of the Beachcomber, a small rotunda that extends past the swimming pool and overlooks the beach below. It was there I set up a kind of sunset-watching headquarters both afternoons of my stay. As the friendly piano player pried saloon tunes out of the tinny baby grand, I and a couple dozen other lazy people--mostly snowbirds fleeing frozen northern weather and college kids getting a jump on spring break--relaxed in depth as we watched the waiters fetch coconut after coconut filled with potent coco locos and champagne glasses brimming with margaritas.

Outside on the grass next to the pool, the air reeked of cocoa butter as the collegiate crowd ignored the basics of 1990s dermatology and fried themselves to a ritual crisp. And down on the beach, tattered, aging rental horses trundled tourists back and forth while the more speed-addicted opted for three-wheel all-terrain vehicles (also for rent).

But all this purposeful activity runs counter to the true purpose of a weekend at the Rosarito Beach Hotel: shameless sloth. The hotel has its own spa (massages, facials, saunas and the like), French restaurant (Chabert’s, located in the adjacent old mansion that was originally the residence of the hotel’s founder and his wife), a pair of bars (there’s a second, more cozy one just off the lobby), racquetball courts, tennis courts, two pools, whirlpools and a miniature golf course. People cocoon here.

I had made several tours of the shops and restaurants along Juarez on previous trips (particularly to the open-air artisans’ mercado behind a row of tiny curio shops), so this time I decided to stray from the hotel only occasionally. Still, on Saturday morning, I couldn’t resist the impulse to drive a few miles south on the free road to the Calafia resort. I had seen pictures of the Calafia restaurant and bar, snugly fitted into the rocky face of a cliff overlooking a large cove, and the reality lived up to the publicity. In the late morning the bar was nearly deserted--the result, perhaps, of a hard rain the night before that kept many people at home--but the view of the sea below was inspiring, the best I’d seen on the entire coast. It became even more so when the sun came out and turned the water from slate gray to azure blue. And the Bloody Marys were top-notch.

Back at the hotel for lunch, I decided to wander out to the end of the parking lot and around the corner to the Mi Casita street-side taco stand on Juarez. There, the infectiously cheery man with the gap-toothed grin behind the counter served up four perfectly constructed and spiced tacos carne asada and an ice-cold Tecate to wash them down with. I’ve always believed that the finest lunch in Rosarito Beach can be had at any number of such stands on Juarez and Mi Casita did nothing to change my mind.

Not that tacos are the only game in town. My two favorite restaurants on the boulevard are Ortega’s, which specializes in lobster and regional dishes, and El Nido, an inviting, intimate, dark-wood-and-brick place a couple blocks from the hotel that makes glorious carne asada plates.

I spent the early part of the evening on my balcony, listening to Ravel on the Walkman and dreaming of the pepper steak I planned to order at Chabert’s later. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, but the mansion was impressive, particularly the big mirrors with the leering wood dragons twining around them that overlooked one of the dining rooms.

Relaxation, particularly sleep, comes easy here. The sound of the surf sees to that. I chalked up two of the best nights’ sleep I’ve had in months. And two perfect breakfasts. A perfect breakfast at the Rosarito Beach Hotel, as far as I’m concerned, always includes the sliced papaya, toast, orange juice (freshly squeezed), bacon and a small bit of hash browns. This for about $5. There was also a handsome buffet brunch, but it was nearly check-out time and I had 18 holes of golf at the Real del Mar golf course (nine miles north of the hotel) on the morning agenda. The greens are rough and you can lose a lot of balls here, but if you play for fun you can actually leave feeling relaxed and are therefore better able to endure the wait at the border crossing.

I didn’t hit another traffic slow-down until I pulled into Mission Viejo. But the temptation to turn around and barricade myself in the Rosarito Beach Hotel for another week was almost overwhelming.

Budget for One

Two nights, Rosarito Beach

Hotel: $ 204.00

Meals, drinks, streetside tacos: 80.00

Mexican auto insurance: 37.50

Gas, round trip from Santa Ana: 18.00

Tolls: 4.60

Golf, Real del Mar Golf Club: 45.00

FINAL TAB $389.10

Rosarito Beach Hotel, P.O. Box 430145, San Diego, Calif. 92143; tel. (800) 343-8582.