Vacation: Cabo San Lucas
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The famous arch at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Two weeks ago, my wife and I took a week long vacation to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was one of the most fun we’ve had and it’s a place we fell in love with right away, for many reasons. I loved it because I like warm places and beaches and an ocean view. My wife loved walking and seeing the city and enjoying the excursions.
The hotel we stayed at
We stayed at the Wyndham Cabo San Lucas, which is also known as the Tesoro Cabo San Lucas. It’s a nice hotel and the room was good, with comfortable beds and a nice view of the marina from our balcony.
the morning view of the marina from our room at the Wyndham
Other than a few late night party people making noise at 4am and a car alarm going off in the parking lot, we liked our stay here. But our next visit, we will want to go stay at another resort.
Beaches
Lover’s Beach – the Pacific Side
There is no shortage of beaches in Cabo. All along the coast – both part of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean. One such beach was called Lover’s Beach.
My wife on Lover’s Beach
It’s easy to get to from a couple of the resorts or by water taxi, which is how we got there. The area is quite small for a beach, but there’s a lot of sand here. On the Sea of Cortez side, swimming is safe and easy. On the Pacific Ocean side, it’s harsh with warnings to not swim.
The entire Pacific Ocean side is not meant for swimmers
Most of the areas along the Pacific have “No Swimming” warnings. If you want to swim, you should go find a beach on the Sea of Cortez side.
The rock formations on Lover’s Beach – the Pacific side
The beach on one side is in the Sea of Cortez. The other side in on the Pacific Ocean. There are many rock formations here, which are incredible.
Santa Maria bay
During a snorkeling excursion, we ended up spending a few minutes on the beach at Santa Maria bay.
The beach front from the Grand Solmar resort
Further north from Lover’s Beach on the Pacific Ocean side, is the beach front area of the Grand Solmar resort. The sand is not the finest I’ve set feet on, but it is a golden tan color that looks great.
Me and my wife on the beach at Grand Solmar resort
I’ve always loved an ocean view, which relaxes me each and every time.
Chilaquiles
Chilaquiles – my favorite food while in Mexico
When I travel, I always try to have a meal that is local to the area. I instantly fell in love with chilaquiles, a tortilla-based breakfast entree that I had five times in the week I was there.
Another serving from a different restaurant with a fried egg
Each place seemed to place their own touch to this traditional meal that began life as a bunch of leftovers. Adding a fried egg to it made it even better. This is one meal I am going to look forward to not only making at home, but also enjoying again when I go back to Mexico.
Booze
A shot of tequila
Booze flows a lot here in Cabo San Lucas. There’s not really any restrictions on the serving of it. You have to be at least 18 years of age and you can walk around the marina and about town with an open container. Very much like Vegas, only further south and with real beaches.
We started off our first night in Cabo and a place that had $1.50 tequila shots. It was a nice repasado that went down smooth… no tequila face made!
Bloody Marys
Most mornings, we had bloody marys, which were made with a nice kick to them.
A shot of tequila and a Corona
I drank a lot of tequila and a lot of beer. Corona flowed, as did Pacifico.
Me with a drink – a familiar sight
The drinks weren’t really cheap, although some places, they just got bigger.
Dirty Monkey.. a mudslide w/ banana liqueur
We found a drink pool side called a Dirty Monkey. And they were two-for-one in the afternoon. We had a few of these while enjoying tanning time.
The duty free store at Los Cabos airport
Even as we were leaving, there was booze. At the duty free store at the airport, you can take 2 liters of with you back to the states.
Out and About
Cabo San Lucas at night
The city is composed of many streets and roads, with a population of around 68,000. The local vendors and stores were nice, mixed in with shop owners always ready for the sales pitch to come inside their stores.
Pesos… not really a lot
The US dollar is accepted here at just about every place we went, even though the peso is the national currency. The exchange rate of the peso to the dollar varied by store and street vendor. We exchanged our dollars for pesos, mostly used to buy bottled water and other small items we purchased.
A busy Friday night in downtown Cabo
The town gets busy at night and is much like other towns of it’s size. During the day, the timeshare pushers made their best efforts to annoy us on just about every street corner.
The End
We both enjoyed our week in Cabo San Lucas and plan to go back in a couple of years. It was safe, warm, had great beaches, lots of great drinks and many other sites to see [which I will have another blog post that covers other things we did while there]. I highly recommend this part of paradise at the end of Baja California for a vacation and time in the sun.
Did the chilaquiles you eat have the chips crispy or mushy? I’ve had them both ways, and I absolutely prefer crispy chips. I was told the it’s a regional thing, but it seems pretty random to me. Believe it or not, I’ve never been to Cabo, even though there’s a Hard Rock there. I really need to remedy that some day.
Most of the time, they used the mostly crispy chips. One of the meals used the mushy chips, which I think was mostly due to how much sauce they had been sitting in at the brunch buffet.
As for the Hard Rock, I did visit the one there in Cabo, but it was during the day and not a single patron was there. I wanted to see it busier, but even on Friday night, it was barely 20% full of people. Overall, it’s a nice property with lots of memorabilia and a classic design.
The pictures look great! I’ve never been to Mexico but I’ve always wanted to go and Cabo always seemed like a good place. Of course Vahid has his places he wants to go to. The beaches seem wonderful! I do miss a warm and sunny beach (and with water you don’t need a wetsuit to get into).
I highly recommend Cabo for beaches, always warm weather and great places to eat.
Excellent writeup and I loved the photos! Oddly enough, for living so close to the border, I’ve never been to Mexico. Cabo San Lucas looks absolutely amazing. So glad you like Chilaquiles, they’ve been a breakfast favorite of mine for a while now.
Thank you, sir. And cool you already know about and have had chilaquiles. I can’t wait to find a local place here in Salt Lake that serves them (and of course, to go back to Mexico to have them again)
OMG, that is breakfast?! Sign me up! NOM NOM NOM!
I am happy you two had such a fabulous location. It looks like you had perfect weather too! Sigh! Those beaches! And the rock formations are so cool!
Aruba was similar in that on one side, it was not safe to swim. I found that very intersting!
Yes, the chilaquiles is so, so good. And I’m sure it could be vegan.
Wow! That looks gorgeous and fun. Now I wanna go. Any pictures from inside Cabo Wabo? Did you meet Sammy and Mike?? Did they ask you to jam with them??? Did you say “hell yes!”????
Yes, there are going to be pictures of Cabo Wabo in a future post/video (I visited twice in the week). Unfortunately, there were no personal visits from Sammy or Mike. If there would have been, that would have been one of the greatest music moments of my life.
This was so much fun to see after just getting back myself!! And I discovered chilaquiles the morning I left – have to have more of those again. (I like them with the red sauce.)
Chilaquiles with red sauce was good, although I preferred the green. Glad your visit there was great. Grand Solmar is a great resort.
It looks lovely; I’ve never been to that part of Mexico.
You should go sometime. Great place to visit.
Hi Marty,
My name is Toni and I’m with Dwellable.
I was looking for blogs about Cabo San Lucas to share on our site and I came across your great photos and trip. If you’re open to it, I’d like to feature your site. Please shoot me an email at toni(at)dwellable(dot)com.
Hope to hear from you soon!
-Toni F.