Journey to La Rumorosa, Mexico’s UFO town

The small Mexican mountain town of La Rumorosa is at its most beautiful when the dying sun bathes it in a clean, soft, orange light. Or pink, depending on the day. Whatever color, the landscape seems more innocent. As if nothing disturbing could happen there.

At that innocent hour, looking for Jaime Maussan Flota Avenue, I come across two ladies out for a walk. They can’t tell me exactly where this avenue is, but they tell me that at night the sky there is clear and star-lit. And that they have seen strange things that could be flying saucers. They say it as if it were the most natural thing in the world because, since the year 2022, La Rumorosa has been the “World Capital of the UFO Phenomenon.” This is announced on a sign as you enter this Martian landscape, comprised of desert and spectacular rocks of ocher and reddish tones, which lie in the Sierra de Juarez, within the state of Baja California, northern Mexico. Until the 1930s, La Rumorosa was hard to get to. The road that now winds its way along the area, dotted with viewpoints offering postcard-worthy vistas for the nostalgic or Instagram-worthy spots for the modern, had not yet been built.

Until 2022, tourists came to La Rumorosa for the nature, the cave paintings in El Vallecito and the archaeological remains. A striking landmark is the Casa de Piedra or Stone House. It stands near that long winding road that crosses the mountain, and blends with the landscape. It is said to have been inhabited by mobsters, such as Al Capone, and to have been a refuge for revolutionaries.

There are also several ranches with swimming pools and camping areas free from light pollution, offering a unique chance to enjoy the brilliance of the night sky. Rancho Las Potrancas has a bar, palapas and a barbecue area. And Rancho El Chaparral resembles a water park, with slides and cabins.

But, since 2022 the Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) area has also been promoted, because many sightings are said to have been made there. There is even an annual international festival — the World UFO Fest (the next one is from March 21 to 23, 2025) — for UFO aficionados, which includes talks and seminars with “bioenergetic practices to facilitate contact with the beings of light” or “testing and vibrational balancing,” according to the website.

Perhaps with an eye on generating more tourist dollars, several streets have been named in this town of less than 2,000 inhabitants in honor of important figures in the field of ufology. One of them was the avenue Jaime Maussan, a journalist and researcher in this field. He went viral in 2023 when he went to Mexico’s Congress to present mummified bodies of what he defined as non-human beings found in Peru. Streets have also been dedicated to Peruvian Sixto Paz Wells and to researcher and television presenter Giorgio A. Tsoukalos.

Still searching for Jaime Maussan Avenue, I enter Dulce Altura, a restaurant and bakery that has those high ceilings in the shape of a sharp isosceles triangle, typical of cold, mountainous regions. Inside, the decoration is modern, with a sculpture of a UFO and three metal aliens. Besides selling delicious bread and sweets, wood-fired pizzas and other dishes, they sell alien-themed magnets, which “sell well,” according to the cashiers.

They tell me how to get to Jaime Maussan Avenue. It is a few hundred meters down the main road that splits the town in two. The avenue is a half-paved street, with patches of dirt and a few simple houses scattered at a distance from one another. The street lacks a sense of care perhaps because the focus is on the sky and on the strange lights captured on video by numerous people over the years.

But UFO tourism is not only limited to this corner of the world. Perhaps the most famous location for it is Area 51, in America’s Nevada desert, or Roswell in New Mexico, or the Nazca plain in Peru and the town of Capilla del Monte in Argentina — to mention a few. What is undeniable is that this type of tourism gets people from all over the planet to visit the most unlikely places.

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