About
Four houses on one coast. All of them ours.
We are an operator, not an intermediary. Everything on this page we run ourselves, from offices in downtown Cabo San Lucas.
Who we are
Cabo Hospitality LLC runs them: a venue that has been on the same downtown corner since 1989 — restaurant, nightclub, events and the clothesline that grew out of it — a nightlife concierge that now works two destinations, an annual pass built on a partner network across Baja, and the creative studio that makes the work for the rest.
Everything we publish is written from inside that. We are not reselling a supplier catalogue and we do not take a fee to recommend a third party — which is precisely why we can say plainly when something is not worth your afternoon.
Our founder sits on the board of CANIRAC Los Cabos, the national restaurant industry chamber, as vice-president for the region. That is not a credential we sell against; it is the reason we know what is opening, what is closing, and what the season is actually going to look like.
What that means for you
We answer as ourselves
A message to this site reaches a person who works in Cabo San Lucas, not a shared support queue in another time zone.
We say no
If a room is wrong for your group or a day is wrong for the water, we will tell you, even when there is a booking in it for us.
We publish what we know
The Journal is the same information we give friends who are flying in. It is free, and there is nothing sponsored in it.
Twenty-four seconds
Or just watch it.
The destination
Los Cabos is not two towns.
Almost everything written about this place says the same thing: two towns and a corridor between them. The destination’s own tourist board says it. It is a convenient story, and it leaves out most of where we live.
Los Cabos is a municipality of 351,111 people spread across 400 localities. The southern tip of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, it runs from the water to about 1,800 metres up in the Sierra de la Laguna. Where the Sea of Cortés meets the Pacific Ocean — two different bodies of water a few hundred metres apart, which explains most of what surprises visitors here.
The municipality was created in 1981. Its seat is San José del Cabo — not the larger city — and someone from here is a cabeño.
The five parts you can tell apart
Cabo San Lucas
The western tip
202,694 people
The biggest city in the municipality and the loud one — and, unusually for a Mexican town, it has no main plaza or cathedral at its heart. It grew around the marina instead. Every brand in the colectivo was born within walking distance of that water.
San José del Cabo
The east, and the seat of government
136,285 people
Smaller than Cabo San Lucas and in charge of it: San José is the municipal seat, and its historic centre was named a Barrio Mágico by Mexico’s tourism ministry in 2024. Cobblestone streets, an Art District, and a parish church on the square that traces back to the mission founded here in 1730 — its facade carries a tile mural of the Pericú revolt. Development was pushed south toward the beaches, which is why the old centre still feels like a town rather than a resort.
The Tourist Corridor
The 33 km between them
The coastal highway joining the two cities, lined with the resorts and the golf. Most of what gets photographed from a balcony happens along here — and there are still undeveloped beaches between the gates.
Santiago, Miraflores and the sierra
Inland, at the foot of the Sierra de la Laguna
1,996 people
Forty-five minutes north of the airport the desert turns green. Santiago sits almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, near petroglyphs left by the Pericú; Miraflores is orchards, ranches and leatherwork. This is where the fruit and the water come from, and almost no visitor sees it.
La Ribera and the East Cape
North along the Sea of Cortés
2,320 people
A farming and fishing coast on the Cortés side, an hour and a half from either city. La Ribera is the way in to Cabo Pulmo, whose reef is one of the few living coral reefs in North America and a national park — the diving there is the best argument that this coast is more than a marina.
Where everyone actually lives
The 2020 census, by locality. Two of them hold most of the municipality; the other 398 hold the rest — and they are the reason the food, the water and the people arrive.
| Cabo San Lucas | 202,694 |
| San José del Cabo | 136,285 |
| La Ribera | 2,320 |
| Miraflores | 1,352 |
| El Campamento | 855 |
| Buenavista | 705 |
| Santa Catarina | 651 |
| Santiago | 644 |
| 392 other localities | 5,605 |
| Total | 351,111 |
Source: INEGI, Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020.
The water
Not every beach here is for swimming.
As a rule of thumb: the Sea of Cortés side and the Corridor’s bays are for swimming; the open Pacific side is for looking at. If there is no one in the water on a warm day, that is the reason.
Go in
Playa El Médano
Cabo San Lucas, on the bay
The town beach, walkable from downtown. Where the day usually starts.
Bahía Chileno
The Corridor
A protected cove with reef at both ends — the snorkelling one.
Bahía Santa María
The Corridor
A horseshoe cove. The one we send families to.
Playa Palmilla
Near San José del Cabo
Sheltered, shallow and calm. Good for small children.
Playa del Amor
Land’s End, Cortés side
Reachable only by boat. Swim on this side of the sand.
Look, don’t swim
Playa Divorcio
Land’s End, Pacific side
The same strip of sand as Playa del Amor, facing the open Pacific. Not the same water at all.
Playa Solmar
Cabo San Lucas, Pacific side
Heavy shore break directly onto the beach.
The Pedregal shore
Cabo San Lucas, Pacific side
Beautiful, and no place to get in the water.
Conditions change with swell and season, and a calm bay can turn. This is what the water tends to do, not a guarantee about any given day.
What people come to see
El Arco
The arch at Land’s End, where the peninsula stops and the Pacific meets the Sea of Cortés. Reachable only by water, and the reason half of Cabo San Lucas owns a panga.
Playa del Amor
Lovers Beach, on the same headland. Sand on the Cortés side, open Pacific on the other — a few dozen metres apart and two completely different bodies of water. Swim on one, not the other.
Cabo Pulmo
A national park on the East Cape, about 100 km north of Cabo San Lucas, protecting a reef roughly 20,000 years old — the oldest of only three on the west coast of North America, and the northernmost in the eastern Pacific. The fishing families who lived off it closed their own fishery in 1995; fish abundance came back by 462%.
The San José estuary
Where the arroyo meets the sea at the edge of San José del Cabo — birds, palms and fresh water in a desert. Walkable from the old town.
Sierra de la Laguna
The range behind everything, rising to about 1,800 metres inside the municipality. Oak and pine above the cactus, and the watershed both cities drink from.
Planning it
When to come
The weather barely moves between seasons — the year averages around 26 °C. Late winter and early spring bring the least rain and the most comfortable warmth; late summer and autumn are when prices soften, and when the rain, if it comes, arrives.
Whales
They arrive to breed and calve in the winter and are generally watched from January through March, having come down the coast from the north. In season you will see them from boats that went out for something else entirely.
Getting around
Two airports serve the municipality — the international one outside San José del Cabo, and a smaller field at Cabo San Lucas. Downtown Cabo San Lucas is walkable; anything beyond your own town is a bus or a car.
Where to start
The bay in the morning, the Corridor in the afternoon, downtown at night. If you only get one day, that is the one. If you get three, spend the third inland.
One road
Federal Highway 1 is the only paved artery joining the airport, San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. A single incident on it delays everyone, so give an airport run more time than the map says.
Don’t drive it at night
Outside the towns the highway is unlit and unfenced, and cattle and horses wander onto the asphalt. If you are coming back from the East Cape or the sierra, leave before dark.
The clock here does not move
Baja California Sur keeps UTC−7 all year. Mexico ended daylight saving in 2022, and the exemption that kept it went to the border municipalities up north, not to us — so the gap between you and Los Cabos shifts by an hour twice a year while nothing changes on this end. Confirm the hour of an early flight rather than assuming it.
The arrivals hall
Between customs and the doors at the airport you will be approached by people who sound like transport coordinators and are selling timeshare. Your driver is outside. Keep walking.
The houses
- El Squid Roe
World famous since 1989, and still on the same corner downtown.
- Get Party Access
The nightlife concierge for Los Cabos and Cancún.
- Baja Pass
One annual e-pass. Real discounts across Baja.
- Hecho en Cabo
The in-house studio. Everything you are looking at was made here.
El Newsletter de Cabo
One letter a month from Cabo San Lucas: what is open, what is worth it, and what we would tell a friend who was flying in.
