Los Barriles is a small community part of the area recently known as the East Cape of Baja; It has around four thousand people population, and it welcomes so many visitors every year. This town has become quite popular thanks to the water sports activities practiced in the zone, such as sportfishing, kiteboarding, whale watching, etc. though nowadays a wide variety of new sports are practiced in the zone like hiking, biking and of course the popular pickleball.
Although the ocean and gorgeous swimmable beaches are the main attractions of Los Barriles, the town has much more to offer. It is a fact that Los Barriles is a beautiful village and it has everything you may need; you could find a wide variety of delicious restaurants and markets owned by local people with great stories behind; Stories that we will be more than pleased to tell you in another time because today we're going to talk about the story behind its name...
We can start with the translation, Los Barriles means The Barrels, yes, like the containers... Well, many years ago, before sportfishing and windsurfing, this community was known as "Ensenada de Palmas" which means something like "the cove with palm trees" and it was a safe port for boats of people from the mainland who used to come to buy animals and water.
There are local people in town who swear that Los Barriles was a pirate's port.
Elder people assure that one day a pirate boat arrived to hide a few barrels, but instead of being filled with water, they had gold inside! It is said that just one person witnessed this event, and the story says that he had the pirates' permission to take the gold if they didn't come back for a certain date... Sadly this person died without taking the gold neither telling anybody where the pirates buried the barrels.
Local people are well engaged in this story and some of them even claim to know where the barrels are located or know someone who does it;
One of the places that are usually related to this tale is a hill close to El Pescadero, where some fishermen of the area say that sometimes when they fish during the night they notice that the hill seems to be on fire; which in the Mexican culture is related to a buried treasure...
What is actually a treasure is this story being told over and over again by the elder locals to the young generations, keeping a beautiful tale alive and curious about the story behind our amazing town's name.