Laid-back and upscale, Los Cabos is no Cancun

By Phil Vettel
Chicago Tribune

PHIL VETTEL / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS The landlubber's way to enjoy Medano Bay is from the tiered terraces of Ristorante DaGiorgio II, a few kilometers east of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

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LOS CABOS, Mexico — My wife and I are relaxing in the hot tub, which is also occupied by a handful of other adults and two children — a pre-teen girl and her brother. 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 is to compare this peninsular tourist magnet with the one on the opposite side of the country. Specifically, is rampaging development and runaway tourism turning this beautiful area into another Cancun?

Los Cabos Lodging There are many hotels in San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas; the fanciest resorts are along the 20-mile corridor separating the two towns. Packages that include hotel and airfare can be a more economical way to go; check with airlines and travel agents. More information Mexico Tourism Board: 800-446-3942 or www.visitmexico.com

The short answer: Yup. But Los Cabos has a ways 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. Driving between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, there are long stretches of highway where you can see the beach from your car. That's almost impossible to do 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 (you can sometimes find somewhat discounted rooms through a travel agent ).

Cancun has some pretty good restaurants, but, as far as I saw, nothing on the order of the high-end establishments that Los Cabos offers — including one of the new places in town, the Palmilla resort's C. The Los Cabos area is also a golfer's paradise, not that it matters much to me. This tiny stretch of land is home to no fewer than seven world-class golf courses, according to magazines that know about such things, 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. I turned to my friends and said, 'Excuse me, I'm having a sexual moment right now.' "

Ah, yes. The whales. 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 in the area 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.

Of course, many tourists aren't content to stare at the sea from the beach or balcony, waiting for that telltale water spout and hoping for a glimpse of whale. 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, a major calving site (about $300).

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 little 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.

But for the nautically challenged (me), El Arco is a rock with a hole in it, and if I wanted a color snapshot of it I'd just buy a postcard. The way for landlubbers to view the Arch is to do so from one of the open-air, beachfront restaurants lining the Playa Medano, 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 (which to me combines six hours of motion sickness with the thrill of a pre-dawn wakeup call), kayaking (bobbing like an hors d'oeuvre at shark's-eye level), or jetting across the bay in a rented personal watercraft (the mosquitoes of the boating world). But don't let me stop you.

At some point, however, you'll want to visit the towns themselves, not just the geography and fauna surrounding them. Though they're 20 miles apart, it's worth making the time to visit both 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, non-stop 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 devoid of commercialism.

San Jose del Cabo

Your first glimpse of San Jose del Cabo, on the road from the airport that serves the area, will leave you unimpressed. The road is lined with a series of ratty-looking, utilitarian shops — car detailers, mini-marts, insurance dealers — the unromantic facts of daily life.

Driving just a few blocks toward the water, however, there's a nifty central district of narrow, tree-lined streets filled with tidy shops, cafes and a few historic buildings. The shopping, at first, was not as wonderful as promised; it seemed 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).

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 Cardenas, 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 actually fronts for time-share pitches.

The hot bars, which stay open until 3 a.m., include El Squid Roe, The Giggling Marlin and Cabo Wabo. 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 itself, 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, local 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.

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 single war whoop. Because, a few frenzied nightclubs and hyper-aggressive marketers aside, Los Cabos is about relaxation and low-key fun.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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