The towns of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo and the
18-mile corridor of luxury beach and golf resorts between them are
Mexico’s success story of the last decade.
The three vacation areas, which together make up Los Cabos, were
not even blips on the tourist screen 15 years ago. But their
visitor count was 745,000 in 2002 and it’s expected to be even
higher this year.
It didn’t hurt the tourist numbers when the eyes of the world
turned on Los Cabos last October for the prestigious Asia-Pacific
Economic Conference (APEC), attended by President George W. Bush
and scores of other world leaders.
Streets and buildings were spruced up for the event and, even
more important, long-term improvements were made to the area’s
infrastructure. Local and long distance telephone service and
Internet systems have been upgraded and a new road, built for the
dignitaries’ limousines, now connects Los Cabos International
Airport in San Jose and the corridor highway. The new road shaves
drive time and bypasses the seedier outskirts of San Jose del
Cabo.
Cabo San Lucas, now the fun capital of Baja, was an isolated
dirt-street fishing and cannery village of a few hundred souls in
the 50s and 60s, when American sport fishermen began flying down in
their private planes to fish the marlin-rich Sea of Cortes.
They were followed by Hollywood celebrities, who brought their
yachts down the coast to party on the beach, safe from public
gaze.
The opening of the Transpeninsular Highway from San Diego to
Cabo San Lucas in the early 70s brought the first wave of surfers
and campers, and the airport opened at San Jose in 1977.
Fonatur, the tourism development arm of the Mexican government,
put its support behind Los Cabos and in the 1980s, when Mexican
real estate law was changed to allow foreign investment, builders
moved in to fill the area with the hotels, condos and timeshares
that now line the marina and stretch along the once deserted
beaches.
Thanks to its busy 300-slip marina and numerous sport fishing
charters, this town is the number one hotel choice for the serious
fishing crowd. Bustling Medano beach, whose waters are safe from
the undertow encountered along much of the coast, and a lineup of
water sports rental shops and eateries attract families and the
younger crowd.
There are accommodations in all price ranges, with lots of
condos as well as hotels. Some, such as the cliffside Finisterra
and the beachfront Hacienda and Solmar, were built during the early
sport fishing days and now are much expanded and renovated. Among
those joining them along Medano beach are the newer colonial-style
Melia San Lucas, Cascadas, Villa del Estancia, Pueblo Bonito Blanco
and Pueblo Bonito Rose. (The third and newest Pueblo Bonito is on
nearby Sunset Beach.)
These and other popular hotels are convenient to San Lucas’
higgledy-piggledy downtown, crammed with craft and souvenir shops,
taco stands and international gourmet restaurants, a new shopping
and entertainment center and the town’s famous collection of rowdy
watering holes with names such as Giggling Marlin and Squid
Row.
In contrast, San Jose del Cabo at the other end of the corridor
has been a bona fide town for the past 200 years. And it boasts all
the amenities of an established community, including a central
plaza with a traditional gazebo and an impressive church.
At its peak in the 1850s, this town was an important port for
trading ships en route from Europe to the Philippines. The graceful
old houses of seafaring and merchant families are now restaurants
such as the gourmet Damiana and Mi Cocina or quality boutiques and
galleries highlighting the growing artists’ colony. Window shopping
on San Jose’s crooked streets can take hours.
Nightlife, on the other hand, is limited to a few bars with
music on weekends. (Party animals can always run over to Cabo San
Lucas in 40 minutes.)
San Jose’s historic district has only small hotels, such as the
elegant Casa Natalia on the plaza. But its affordable beachfront
hotel row includes the only three big all-inclusives in Los Cabos:
the El Presidente-Intercontinental, the Royal Solaris and the new
Faro del Cabo.
