The glamour of Mexico's Los Cabos
http://www.newsday.com/travel/ny-trcov0328,0,2141583.story?c...
BY PHIL VETTEL
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
March 28, 2004
My wife and I are relaxing in the hot tub, which is also occupied by a handful of other adults and exactly two children -- a preteen girl and
presumably her younger brother, whom she's carrying on her hip. The boy is having a fine time, and eager to let his father know it.
"Dad!" he yells, waving enthusiastically. "Dad! Dad! Dad!"
I look up the terraced hill to see if anybody is noticing. Someone is. Sporting a navy-blue baseball cap and a gray T-shirt, a man is gently waving
back. Dad.
Richard Gere.
And I settle back into the warm water and think, "This definitely wouldn't happen in Cancun."
Which may seem like an odd observation, but part of my mission here in the Los Cabos region of Mexico is to compare this peninsular tourist magnet
with the one on the opposite side of the country. Specifically, the question: Are rampaging development and runaway tourism turning this beautiful
area into another Cancun?
Isn't cancun
The short answer: Yes. But Los Cabos has a way to go before it catches up.
For one thing, Cancun's coastline is jammed shoulder to shoulder with resort hotels, interrupted by the occasional, grudging, public beach access. Los
Cabos, which includes the coastal towns of Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo and the 20-mile oceanfront corridor separating the two, has plenty of
beachfront resorts as well. But there's so much more land here that quite a bit of ocean frontage remains (for now) undeveloped. There are long
stretches of highway where you can see the beach from your car on a drive between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. That's almost impossible to
find in Cancun's hotel zone.
And though both areas are overrun with tourists, Los Cabos has always been more of a rich person's playground, going back to when Hollywood types flew
here on private jets before commercial air service began. My Richard Gere moment, for instance, took place within the confines of the ultra-exclusive
Palmilla resort, where the junior suites run about $800 per night in high season. I don't think Cancun has any properties in that price range, whereas
Los Cabos has a few, including Las Ventanas al Paraiso, which is the equal of Palmilla in just about every way, price included -- and, with but 61
suites, is even more intimate. Palmilla, by contrast, has 172 accommodations (61 rooms, 91 junior suites and 20 one-bedroom suites).
Cancun has some pretty good restaurants but, as far as I saw, nothing on the order of the high-end establishments Los Cabos claims -- including the
newest place in town, the Palmilla resort's C. That's C as in Charlie Trotter, uber chef.
Go in for golf
The Los Cabos area is also a golfer's paradise. This tiny stretch of land is home to no fewer than seven world-class golf courses, and there are other
courses besides. You'll pay $200 and more to play a round, but serious golfers don't seem to mind.
"The golf here is outstanding," raves one visitor, a gent who hails from Louisiana. "This morning, I was shooting toward the green, facing the ocean,
and just as my shot landed right near the cup, I saw a whale spout."
Indeed, the whales are another powerful tourist draw. Los Cabos occupies the southern extremity of the Baja Peninsula. To the west, the rugged Pacific
Ocean. To the east, the calmer Sea of Cortes. From January through March, gray whales (along with blues, humpbacks and others) arrive to raise their
young in the warmer, safer and saltier (i.e., more buoyant) waters off Los Cabos. Two hours after we arrived at Los Cabos, my wife spotted her first
whale -- from her beach chair. We made at least a dozen other sightings in our four days.
Watch for the whales
Of course, many tourists aren't content to stare at the sea from the beach or balcony, waiting for that telltale water spout. They head out to where
the whales are swimming. Lots of companies offer whale-watching tours, from two-hour jaunts in pontoon boats (running about $40) to all-day trips that
include a quick Cessna flight to Magdalena Bay, reportedly a major calving site (about $300).
One woman we spoke to took the quickie tour and said that a whale bumped her boat and surfaced so close she was able to touch it -- the thrill of a
lifetime. Another man encountered a whale that was so much larger than the boat that it scared him half to death. "I know they don't eat meat," he
fretted. "But what if today's the day he decides to try it?"
My wife would have loved to have taken a tour, but since she was saddled with a husband who gets queasy just seeing boats bob in the water, we did all
our whale-watching on land.
And we found a great vantage point in the aptly named Whale Watcher Bar in the Hotel Finisterra. The Finisterra is built into a tall cliff overlooking
Cabo San Lucas, and the top-floor Whale Watcher Bar offers a terrific view of the Pacific Ocean. With a decent pair of binoculars (which you'll have
to bring yourself), you can see for miles. Plus there's no cover, and the drinks are reasonably priced.
The other natural wonder to check out is El Arco, or The Arch. The southernmost tip of Baja is called Land's End, a majestic rock formation that rises
from the sea. The third rock in from the end has a natural archway that has become the defining image of the area. Every hour, scores of tourists hop
on glass-bottomed boats and ferry their way out there to gawk and snap photos. When the tide is right, there is a tiny patch of sand called Lover's
Beach. Many of the boats will drop off passengers at Lover's Beach and pick them up on the return trip.
The way for landlubbers to view The Arch is from one of the open-air restaurants lining the Playa Medano (Medano beach), which fronts Medano Bay
across from Cabo San Lucas proper. Or venture a few kilometers east and dine at Ristorante DaGiorgio II, a cliffside restaurant whose terraced outdoor
tables offer wonderful views of El Arco (albeit at a distance), the water and Cabo San Lucas. Other boating opportunities include deep-sea fishing,
kayaking or jetting across the bay in a rented personal watercraft.
Don't forget towns
At some point, however, you'll want to visit the towns, not just the geography and fauna surrounding them. Although they're 20 miles apart, it's worth
making the time to visit Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo.
According to the conventional wisdom, San Jose del Cabo is the quaint, calm town where you can see the real Mexico, and Cabo San Lucas is the vulgar,
over-Americanized, nonstop display of Sodom- with-surf hedonism. These are about as useful as most generalizations; in our experience, Cabo San Lucas
is not completely devoid of charm, nor is San Jose del Cabo completely devoid of commercialism.
San Jose del Cabo
If you arrive by plane, you'll land in San Jose del Cabo and taxi or drive to your hotel. That first glimpse of San Jose probably will leave you
unimpressed, if not horrified; the road from the hotel skirts the downtown and is filled with ratty-looking, utilitarian shops -- car detailers,
mini-marts, insurance dealers -- the unromantic facts of daily life.
Drive but a few blocks southeast (toward the water), however, and you come upon a district of narrow, tree-lined streets filled with tidy shops,
charming-looking cafes and a few historic buildings. You can spend a day here and see just about everything, depending on how long you linger over
cervezas at lunch (and do linger; more than a few shops close from noon to 2 p.m.).
Shop until you drop
The shopping, at first, was not as wonderful as promised; it seemed that every store we hit was offering the same refrigerator magnets, cheap
glassware, serapes, bottles of vanilla extract and vulgar T-shirts. We were just about to give up when my wife spotted a few shops across from the
Plaza Mijares. Jackpot, of a sort, as we found three consecutive shops with interesting and affordable trinkets, including lots of interesting Day of
the Dead artworks (a weakness of ours). A few blocks west, past the Iglesia San Jose (a pretty, twin-spired church built on the site of a 1735 Jesuit
mission), we found a quartet of modern art galleries.
San Jose del Cabo is certainly the calmer of the two cities. The streets are less crowded, it's quiet enough that when a dog barks a block away
everybody notices, and nightlife consists of dinner and drinks at one of the small restaurants. San Jose is getting its beauty sleep just as Cabo San
Lucas is getting revved up.
Cabo San Lucas
Every condescending remark directed at this tourist-clogged town is true -- if you stick to Avenida Lazaro Card##as, the main drag. Here's where
you'll find bars offering all-you-can-drink tequila shots from 4 to 6 p.m. (plastered by 6:15; there's a goal) and several "Tourist Centers" that are
fronts for time-share pitches (if you're offered a free tour, breakfast or round of golf, keep moving). The hot bars, which stay open until 3 a.m.,
include El Squid Roe, The Giggling Marlin and Cabo Wabo, the last one owned by rocker Sammy Hagar (who, they say, performs several times each year).
Allegedly, this is where young people go to liquor up and practice their "Girls Gone Wild" moves.
Where the clubs are
There are several other clubs with obvious names that feature "showgirls" and offer dancing of a different sort; one features "all-Mexican showgirls,"
presumably targeting visitors looking to expand their cultural horizons.
But a block over is the Boulevard Marina, where you'll find a couple of upscale shopping malls (Plaza Bonita and Plaza Las Glorias) and the marina,
which admittedly is clogged with tourists but is very pretty, especially if you like gawking at fancy boats.
It takes a little while to wander through the marina, because you'll be stopped every 20 feet by restaurateurs pitching their wares (with a menu in
one hand and a platter of food in the other, they're easy to spot), tour- and fishing-excursion touts, peddlers selling necklaces or sticks of gum
and, yes, more time-share opportunities.
A few blocks in from the water, however, and things get considerably calmer. Suddenly, the streets are more narrow, the shops offer more interesting
goods, and the cafes are smaller and more appealing (if you want to taste tequila, not simply chug it, check out the wide selection at Pancho's). The
shopping still isn't at the level of the best San Jose del Cabo stores, but it's at least theoretically possible to spend a few hours in Cabo San
Lucas without hearing a war whoop.
It's all about relaxing, because, a few frenzied nightclubs and hyper-aggressive marketers aside, Los Cabos is about relaxation and low-key fun. As we
sipped drinks on the outdoor terrace at DaGiorgio, the sun shining brightly, the water and Cabo San Lucas stretched out below us, my wife turned to me
and sighed, "This is my idea of a vacation."
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