April-May, 2021
When we got fully vaccinated in late February of this year, we thought we had to go somewhere to celebrate. How about Catalina Island? I looked into it, and the winter discount season was coming to an end before we could go. Then Travelzoo sent us an offer we thought we could not refuse: $120/night for 2 at an all inclusive resort in Los Cabos. Flights were around $250 per person, and the rental car could be had for $120 for 6 days. When everything was said and done, our departure date was set at the end of April. Darn, almost two more months of waiting to fly somewhere?
Los Cabos is comprised of two cities: Cabo San Lucas (population: 202,000) and San Jose del Cabo (population: 136,000), 20 miles apart. I didn’t know this till this trip, and it took me a while to sort out the names with multi words. There is a freeway connecting these two cities, and Los Cabos Airport (SJD) – the sixth busiest airport in Mexico – is north of San Jose del Cabo. Unlike most other cities in Mexico, Cabs are not necessarily cheap (for instance, the airport to Cabo San Lucas often costs $40-100) in Los Cabos. So renting a car made sense for us at the price we paid, we thought. Well, it turned out, we had to sit through a time share presentation in order to get the quoted price from the local agency we made a reservation with. Good thing we had time. If you are curious about public transportation and taxi options, here’s a good information page.
Many resorts are located along the ocean side of this freeway, and, ours, Krystal Grand, was one of them. We did not expect a super luxury place with what we were paying, and there was no surprise. Food was decent, service was o.k., and the facilities were adequate including a free parking service.
Krystal Grand was actually only a mile or two from downtown San Jose del Cabo. Of the three towns we visited, we liked SJDC the best. We parked the car on a side street a few blocks away from the main square (Plaza Mijares), and we walked around.
Due to the pandemic, many businesses were not open. Thus, we just went back to the hotel and ate. Maybe because of the high temperature, we didn’t have a lot of energy, either. We did enjoy our visit, though.
We had been to Cabo San Lucas as a cruise stop in December 2019. At that time, we signed up for a boat tour & got to see all there was to see off the coast of CSL. The shore excursions offered by the cruise ship were not cheap, but, we booked a glass bottom boat tour found on Tripadvisor.com. We got to see the Arch rock and other top attractions for $20 per person. We thought it was worthwhile to do this tour.
This time we wanted to discover other parts of Cabo San Lucas. We drove into town and wanted to check out the cathedral, but parking was impossible around there. After driving around to park, we drove into a shopping center and paid a fee (not unreasonable) to park there. We didn’t know this shopping center was connected to the Marina – we just could not get too far away from it no matter how we arrived in town either by ship or a car.
Cabo San Lacas seemed to be basically a tourist town. Locals provided goods and services to the visitors, and the most tourists either stayed at a resort or swung in and out on a cruise ship. Developed from a small fishing village, there was not a whole lot of “local culture” that a visitor could experience.
Todos Santos (population: 6,485) is a little artists’ colony an hour north of Cabo San Lucas. It is pretty much a one street (Benito Juarez Street) town, and is pretty laid back and welcoming. Street parking was not hard when we were there.
The restaurant that I really wanted to try was Hierbabuena which is off the highway before reaching Todos Santos. A friend of mine who goes to Todos Santos as often as she can manage swears by this restaurant, but we were too hungry to wait till 1 PM opening time.
Maybe next time, we will start the day late & go to Hierbabuena first, have a leisurely lunch, then head on to Todos Santos. That may well be a nice full day.
The best part of our package at Krystal Grand included the free Covid-19 test, which we needed in order to get back to the U.S. We usually preferred the old colonial towns in central regions over resort beach towns in Mexico. But the pandemic brought us here, and, we were glad we did finally spend some time in Los Cabos. Now we know for sure that our original preference was valid.
Small Wide World 