Los Cabos sits at the very tip of the Baja California Sur peninsula, where the Sea of Cortez folds around the headland and runs into the Pacific. The land is desert, its cactus-covered mountains dropping almost to the waterline, and at the far end stands El Arco, the great rock arch that Cabo San Lucas has taken as its emblem. It is a landscape of real contrasts, two seas meeting against a backdrop of dry mountains, and it has become a place where genuinely wild country sits within easy reach of very comfortable resorts. What sets it apart is how close the two stay to one another. You can spend a morning somewhere remote and be back for dinner without changing your shoes.
Surfing in Los Cabos
The wild side comes first, and there is a great deal of it. Come winter, greys and humpbacks travel down the coast from December to April and gather in the warm channel offshore, often within sight of the beach, and the boat trip out to meet them is what most visitors remember longest. The sea stays busy the rest of the year, too, with diving at Cabo Pulmo, whose reef is among the oldest in the region and now strictly protected, and surf up the East Cape for anyone willing to drive for it. Behind the coast, the Sierra de la Laguna gives you walking, palm-shaded canyons and long desert trails, and in its foothills a handful of farm restaurants that grow much of what they serve.
Bar Esquina at Bahia Hotel & Beach House
For all the emphasis on nature, the culture is what tends to surprise people. The two towns keep quite different characters. Cabo San Lucas is the busier of the pair, built around its marina and its fishing fleet, while San José del Cabo, half an hour east, holds on to a colonial old town of low painted houses, a shaded plaza and a gallery district that opens its doors for an art walk every Thursday evening through the season. Between them runs a coastline of resorts, but the older Mexico is never far, in the markets, the mission churches and the food.
Crystal clear waters
That food has become a reason to visit in its own right. The dining here now reaches from Michelin-recognised kitchens to beach palapas serving the morning's catch, much of it built on Baja California Sur produce and the seafood of two seas. Wellness has grown alongside it, with spas that draw on the region's own desert plants and marine minerals, and there is golf laid out along the cliffs for anyone who wants it. None of it cancels out the rest, which is the real point. A single day here can hold both a rock pool and a tasting menu, and it is that ease of moving between the wild and the refined that has carried Los Cabos up the ranks of Mexico's leading luxury destinations.
Reaching it is easier than it used to be. Condor now flies from London to Los Cabos via Frankfurt, putting the south of Baja California Sur a day's travel away, with good reason to look ahead and book early.
To find out more see visitloscabos, and to book flights with Condor visit condor.com
