Diving Cabo San Lucas
Or Hector My Hero
by Alison Boler

Cabo San Lucas is famous for many reasons: Jacques Cousteau raved about the diving; Ernest Hemingway loved the sport fishing; it’s the inspiration for Tequila Sunrise and Margarita cocktails; and more recently its beaches and sand dunes were used to create ancient Troy in the blockbuster movie of the same name starring Brad Pitt.
Cabo is situated at the most southerly point of Baja California – truly lands end – and the cape is flanked on one side by the pounding Pacific Ocean and on the other by the calm blue waters of the Sea of Cortez. It’s a tourist town: party central as far as Baja goes but for all that there’s still plenty of empty beach front and the tarmac runs out pretty quickly once you go back a few streets.
Together with its near neighbour, San Jose Del Cabo, a charming Mexican town, it forms the area known simply a Los Cabos – The Capes.

We (Bob and Allie, Lucy (14), Daisy (12)), spent a week here in August, 2004 following a fabulous two weeks spent diving and sailing the Sea of Cortez out of La Paz, two hundred kilometres to the north, and a peaceful world away from the pizzazz of Cabo. The two make a great combination.
We drove down to Cabo (2.5 hours) on the excellent highway Mex. 19 but there is an international airport that connects the resort with Mexico, U.S., Europe (including the UK).

Our accommodation was at the Villa Del Palmar a first class resort right on the El Medano Beach, one of Cabo’s best. It’s a large resort made up of a traditional hotel and timeshare apartments. We exchanged one of our own timeshare weeks for a stay here. The one bed roomed apartment was extremely comfortable and provided a good base for our trip. The resort has a number of swimming pools, restaurants, a spa and a full range of activities for both adults and children.
We planned to eat dinner out every night – there are lots of excellent restaurants in Cabo – but we self-catered breakfast and grabbed a snack around the pool if we felt hungry. There are a number of top class supermarkets in town including CeCeCe and Costco – you can buy anything and everything you require, both local produce and American and European brands.
There are many white sand beaches around the town stretching in either direction. Most of them are undeveloped and completely pristine. This is why the area was chosen for the filming of Troy. Some of them are not suitable for swimming due to the force of the surf and the undertow. Take local advice. Even El Medano beach, supposedly the most family friendly, has sections which are difficult. I tried swimming in front of our hotel and found it too tough for me: it shelved very suddenly and the surge was enormous and knocked me off my feet repeatedly. We paddled after that and swam in the pools!

The diving around Cabo is famous. Jacques Cousteau visited back in the 1960s and waxed lyrical about the submarine trench that runs off from the end of the peninsular and about the sand chutes that occur there. It’s in an ideal location at the mingling point of two seas – you can see why there would be a whole lot of fish action. Despite being pretty dived out from the previous weeks, we wanted to try out the diving whilst we were in town.
Our hotel had a diving booth near the swimming pool operated by PDS – Professional Diving Services – a large shop down at the marina. It was too convenient to ignore so we signed up for some dives with them. It cost £50 for a 2 tank boat dive to one of the local sites – pretty par for the course.
If you wanted to go to Cabo Pulmo or the Gorda Banks it was £80. These advanced sites involve a twelve hour trip including a road journey of 2 hours each way. The reef at Cabo Pulmo is one of the largest in the whole area and a protected marine environment. Gorda Banks is a remote, offshore seamount famous for large schools of schooling hammerheads and manta sightings.
We were very tempted by Gorda Banks but in the end we decided it would have to wait for our next visit – and there will be a next visit! The top of the sea mount is at 110 feet. This would put it out of the reach of the girls and mean that bottom time would be limited. To travel such a long way for two short dives and to have to leave the girls at the hotel all day seemed unappealing at this point in our trip. However, if you were staying in Cabo for longer or if you weren’t going up to La Paz for more diving, it would definitely be one to go for.
PDS picked us up at the hotel in their van and transported us to the dive shop in the marina (about 10 minutes). There were two other hotel guests with us, pleasant American divers from the Great Lakes region. Cabo is very popular with holidaying Americans. It’s an easy 2 hour flight for them.

The marina is pretty plush, full of expensive yachts and surrounded by many restaurants, bars, shopping and apartments. We checked in at the office, signed all the paperwork, got our tanks and weights sorted out and were introduced to the dive guides.
They were a pretty cosmopolitan group: a Japanese girl, a Frenchman, and Hector, our guide, who was Mexican. You could hire equipment if you wished – it looked to be in good condition – but we used our own. Bob dived in a 3mm wetsuit and I dived in my swimsuit!!! The water was 30°C which I find too hot for neoprene. A diveskin would have been ideal but I didn’t have one and neither did the dive centre.
The boat was the inevitable Panga but as the dive sites are all within about ten minutes ride, my sensitive rump didn’t get much chance to complain at the slamming ride!

Hector – hereafter renamed Hector the Hero in deference to Troy and for other reasons which will become apparent – was a most interesting chap. It turned out that he was an H.S.E. Part 1 qualified commercial diver – as well as a Dive Master and Instructor – and had gained his qualifications over 3 cold months up in Fort William!!! We had a great time discussing diving in dry suits and heated suits and the various dives he had made whilst being in the U.K.
Our first dive was at Pelican Rock, a rock pillar offset from the strip of rocks that forms Lands End, the very end of Baja. This whole place is a staggering sight, a long broken wall of sheer rock faces, contorted by the sea into weird shapes. At one point a tiny beach, called Lovers Beach by the locals, fills the gap between islets. It is unusual in that it has the Pacific on one side of the sand and the Sea of Cortez on the other. You can only reach it by boat.
Most of these rocks and islets are inhabited by a variety of seabirds including pelicans and also the ubiquitous sea lions. There were quite a few dive boats already in place at Pelican Rock. It was obviously a popular site. We dropped into about 7m – a sandy patch which sloped away towards a steep wall. The plan was to swim along the wall in around 30m and then come up a sand chute to Pelican Rock and circumnavigate it before returning to the boat along the reef top.
The visibility was very disappointing. It was about 10m – not unlike the U.K. but obviously the sea was a heck of a lot warmer. There were plenty of fish, many schools of small reef fish, plus puffer fish, sergeant majors, bullseye rays, a turtle, angel fish, parrot fish – all the usual reef dwellers. The wall was great – really sheer and there were gorgonians all the way along it. I could see why Cousteau raved about the place – if the visibility had been good it would have been staggering.
We came to the crevice in the wall that led up to Pelican Rock and swam up it. The sand chute was at the top and it was a fascinating phenomenon to see the sand showering down from the end of this chute like a waterfall. There were lots of moray eels around the rock. Despite the visibility, it was a really enjoyable dive.

Getting back on the boat was not easy. There was a ladder but it was one of those awful fold-up ones that you loosely hang over the side of the boat. I really hate this sort because they never go deep into the water, they move about as you climb and they are very very prone to fold up and lift away just as you reach half way, leaving you clinging on in a sort of crouching position. It’s ok if you are strong in the upper body or a light and limber sprig, you can get up in one strong movement before the thing has a chance to do its worst! However, if you are underpowered in upper body strength in relation to your body weight (like me!) you just can’t get up quickly enough in one movement to avoid the “fold”. Thank heavens Bob was there to haul me up and over. Dignified. Not.
After the dive I asked Hector why the visibility was so bad. He shrugged and said that it was not usually quite as bad as that and that a recent storm had stirred the sand up. However, the next day two truly enormous cruise ships came into Cabo and anchored right off this area. I am far more of the opinion that the cruise ships are causing the deterioration in the water/bottom quality there – I’ve seen the same thing happen in the sites just adjacent to Georgetown Harbour in Grand Cayman. Sadly, I feel that if the cruise ship traffic increases to the delight of the bar and shop trade in Cabo, the reefs close to town will be destroyed.
One of the American divers had been stung on the neck by a string of jellyfish eggs and whilst these are generally akin to a nettle sting, he had a bad reaction so they opted out of the second dive. We took them back to the dock and went back out with Hector.

The second dive took place at the very last rocky islet of the peninsular, a site called very appropriately, Lands End. Hector promised that the visibility would be better there, and it was. The plan was to enter in the lee of the main peninsular and swim across the gap in the blue to the Lands End rock. He warned that there could be surge from the Pacific at this point and on the Pacific side of the rock but that there shouldn’t be any current. We would circumnavigate the rock a number of times, ascending a few metres between each circumnavigation. Finally we would swim back to the boat.

The visibility was better – probably about 20 metres and there were lots of fish about. Big schools of varying types. Not the big fish we had seen in La Paz but impressive in number. There was considerable surge as we crossed the gap to the rock and we had to fin hard to get there. We descended to about 30 metres and began our first circumnavigation. The rock was covered in seafans and small sponges and played host to a lot of reef life. Very nice. We saw several different sorts of morays, the usual large green Pacific Morays and the smaller and more beautiful white Jewelled Moray. There were lobster and crayfish in the crevices and many crabs. It was a great dive site.

Hector had been right about the surge but wrong about the current. It was there and it was quite strong! If you stopped finning you went backwards at a fairly fast lick! So, what could have been a nice potter around the rock at various depths turned into a bit of a marathon. When we weren’t finning hard against the current on one side, we were finning hard against the surge on the other side. Never let it be said that diving isn’t good exercise! Still, the scenery was superb and made it well worth the effort. I was glad though that I had left my camera behind on the boat and also that the girls weren’t with us.
As we rotated towards the shallower water we were joined by diving sea lions who came plunging down to see who these interlopers in their territory were. As usual they made us feel clumsy and inelegant as they wriggled and streaked around us. They come right at you and sort of grin right into your mask as if to say “HA! Come and catch me if you can!”
Finally we decided it was time to get back to the boat (I just couldn’t wait to climb that ladder again!) and set out across the gap. The current and the surge were much stronger now and we had to go flat out, head down for all we were worth. I was really going for it and just about in the middle of the channel swimming in the blue in about 6m when I suddenly felt a difference. Looking down I saw one of my weight pockets disappearing into blue! There was no way I could get down to get it – in fact there was only one way I was going at that point – UP!
I just had a chance to signal to Bob what was happening and then concentrated on slowing my ascent as much as possible and in fact surfaced reasonably normally. Cursing – I just hate losing kit – I swam back to the boat and met Bob and Hector. Hector had been swimming in front of us and hadn’t seen my weight pocket fall – he had just guessed what had happened when he saw me at the surface back at the boat. The weight pocket had disappeared into the blur and there seemed little point in going back down in those conditions to find it. It was a bit of a quiet ride back. Like I said, I hate losing equipment, especially if it’s my fault which this must have been. I couldn’t have secured the Velcro attachment holding the pocket in the jacket securely enough and so when I was head down and finning hard it dislodged.

Anyway, we liked PDS – they were a friendly bunch and ran a good store. They send a photographer along on most of the boats and he takes pictures which you can subsequently buy on disk. I liked the fact that the numbers on the boat were small and in fact on the second dive it was just two of us. Hector was an experienced dive guide and we enjoyed diving with him.
There are lots of dives around Cabo San Lucas and judging by what we saw you could have a good diving holiday here. In our opinion, the local diving is not a patch on the diving out of La Paz but it is better than many places in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean – there are plenty of fish.
When we got back to the dive store, the van was not ready to take us to the hotel so we decamped to the excellent Baja Cantina on the dock for Margaritas and nachos! This casual restaurant/bar was one of our favourites. The location cannot be beaten and the food was great: tasty and plentiful. They serve a vast array of menu items: burgers, pizzas, pasta, prime rib, chicken, steak, lobster and seafood and Mexican specialities. Prices are around £5 for a top entrée. Recommended.
Anyway, by the time we got back to the store, Hector had disappeared so we didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, which was a shame as we had only one more day in Cabo before departing for home. We got back to the hotel and sadly packed all the dive kit away (or nearly all of it…. Grrrr.)

The next day we were wallowing in one of the Villa Del Palmar pools when the chap from the PDS booth came running up. He was grinning from ear to ear and was waving something at us! It was my weight pocket!!!! Hector had gone back out and found it for me! What a hero! He truly lived up to his legendary Trojan namesake! I was really, really pleased and much hand pumping and “mucho gracias, muy bueno, muy hombre etc” went on.

So, what else can I tell you about Cabo San Lucas? It’s a really great place for a holiday – you could easily spend a couple of weeks down here and have the time of your life. Lots and lots of Americans, especially Californians do. There are loads of hotels to choose from to suit every pocket from the budget hacienda to 6 star luxury resorts. Apparently Brad and Jen are now regular visitors! The town has all the tourist trappings from charming streets of quirky shopping to a glittering modern mall. If you like buying jewellery, this is a good place. Mexico is famous for gemstones and silver.

There is plenty for the non diver to do. You can go horse riding both in the countryside and along the beaches. The horses are in excellent condition. There are lots of boat trips on offer. These range from trips to various beaches by Panga (£10 to Love Beach for the day) to catamaran cruises, sunset cruises, dinner cruises. You can parasail, hire jet skis, all the usual beach activities. You can surf on a number of beaches. You can laze in the wonderful sunshine – temperatures never fall below 75F and never rise above 95F. Winter is actually the most popular season because of the superb weather and also because it’s the time when you are guaranteed to be able to spot and get close to huge pods of whales as they make their way down the Pacific coast and into the Sea of Cortez. If you want to see these giants up close and personal come here January through March.
One of the most popular excursions is to go on an APV(quad bike) expedition. Typically these start in the desert and you travel towards the Pacific Coast and eventually descend the sand dunes onto one of the huge beaches there. Bob took Lucy for a half day trip and they loved it, said it was enormous fun. We heard a lot of other good reports too. It was about £30 each.

Cabo San Lucas is one of the most famous centres in the world for sport fishing and this is probably the most popular excursion. The marina is full of fishing boats plying for trade and you can fix something up for a half day, full day or multi day trip. The boats have a very high spotting turret and the crew are absolute experts in knowing exactly where to place the boat and the lines. Generally they will set the line for the punter and then help you reel in – unless you want to do it all yourself of course. Fish can be landed or released. There is a limit on landed fish, dependant on the fish type. The waters are still very prolific and we spoke to a lot of people around the hotel who had all had successful fishing expeditions landing multiple wahoo and even some marlin. If you like sea fishing, this is a great place.

Todos Santos is a charming little Mexican town about 45 minutes drive north of Cabo San Lucas on the Pacific Coast. It has become a centre for artists and there are many art galleries and good quality art craft shops in the town. There are excellent surfing beaches too. It’s a popular day trip. There are a number of good restaurants here. We would recommend Las Fuentes (The Fountains) which is opposite a small park right on a corner of the main street. You eat in the garden or under a huge palapa (thatched) dome roof, and as the name would suggest there are fountains – three of them. Las Fuentes specialises in Mexican food and the portions are large and the quality good. The Chile Rillenos were especially delicious. They also serve burgers and grills for people who don’t like spicy food.

San Jose Del Cabo is also well worth a visit. It is much quieter than Cabo San Lucas with a distinctly Mexican feel especially in the old town area around the Plaza. We really enjoyed visiting by night when you could look around the small shops in the cool. We enjoyed our meal here at the Patio restaurant, which had an incredibly romantic setting: a wonderful open air patio, lit by flickering candles and lush with tropical plants and climbers. One of the tables was even up in the tree on a platform! Not a good one to pick if you like a few beers though! The food was haut cuisine Mexican style and very good.

I said Cabo was a party town and it is. At night the neon turns on and it really starts to get lively. There are many restaurants, often with outdoor sections and just as many bars. Don’t get the wrong idea. This is not Ayia Napa – we didn’t see any lager lout style behaviour. Americans aren’t like that. But people clearly come to town to have a very good time, and with beer and margaritas running at less than £1 a time, why not? Some of the more famous and popular bar/clubs in town are Cabo Wabo, Margaritaville, Squid Roe and the Giggling Marlin. The latter’s claim to fame is that after indulging in a lengthy Happy Hour, patrons are encouraged to have their picture taken whilst suspended from a giant fishing rod! Apparently this is a lot of fun because many people do it.

We ate out in various restaurants every night. Contrary to dire predictions none of us suffered from any form of stomach disorder whilst in Mexico. The water in the hotel is purified and safe to drink from the tap. Most restaurants are the same – but check, and use common sense. Generally speaking, if a place looks clean and is well patronised by locals, it’s probably fine. Some we can recommend:

Baja Cantina: Described before, on the marina.
Casa Country: A fantastic, fun place. Modern Texas country décor, air conditioned serving a mix of Tex-Mex and Mexican cuisine. You can choose steaks, chicken, ribs, enchiladas, seafood etc. Don’t have a starter unless you are very hungry because the portions are huge and they bring you a free basket of warm tortilla chips and a bowl of warm bean dip, then they give you an enormous tureen of salsa which they hand make to your taste at the table. Video screens around the room play country music videos and at times during the evening the waiters put on a dancing display, cowboy style. They also did funny little tricks with they way they poured the beers etc. The girls absolutely loved this place. It was absurdly cheap – massive ribeye steak entrees were about £7, most entrees were less than this. It’s in town, across the street from Macdonalds.
Latitude 22 Roadhouse. A most unique place, styled like an old fashioned roadhouse in Hemingway’s time. Lots of sports and fishing memorabilia all around the place. It’s out of town very near Costco. Again enormous portions – don’t have a starter unless you are really hungry. We couldn’t resist the Prime Rib. You got a 14 oz piece with all the trimmings for £10 – it melted on the knife. Again, they give you chips, salsa and guacamole while they cook your order. Very good Margaritas and a large selection of Mexican beer – light and dark. They are also open for breakfast and it looked good.
The Shrimp House. In town. A no frills place that sells shrimp and lobster – that’s all. You can have it boiled or grilled and with sauce or plain. Very good, very, very cheap. We had a huge plate of massive shrimp – like small crayfish – for about £6.
The Crazy Lobster. In town. Another no frills place – open air dining. Lots of Mexican specialities, shrimp and of course lobster in many forms including soft tacos (very yum). We shared their seafood platter which was unbelievable and included 2.5 full lobster plus scallops, fish, shrimp and calamari for £17.
El Patio de San Jose: In San Jose Del Cabo. See my comments in the report. Not the cheapest but incredibly romantic and very “Mexican”.

Over and above all the activities you can try in Cabo, you can’t overlook the fact that despite the development, it’s still a staggeringly beautiful place. Whether it will long remain so if development continues is in the lap of the Gods, but I can tell you it’s a fantastic place for a holiday, particularly if you have non divers in tow.

Probably, what I would really recommend to the serious travelling British diver is to add Cabo onto the end of a diving holiday elsewhere in Baja. Do what we did and go up to La Paz, dive your socks off, let the family enjoy the beaching, and then come down to Cabo for a week’s r&r in some luxury and sophistication. Or go and dive the East Cape around Cabo Pulmo and Gorda Banks and then come back to Cabo. Or – take the Solmar 5 liveaboard (based in Cabo) up to the islands and sites of the La Paz area and back to Cabo. Or – and this is my top recommendation: Take the Solmar 5 out to the Socorro Islands and then have a break in Cabo. What are the Socorro Islands? They are a group of tiny rock specks and sea mounts 250 miles due south of Cabo and they play host to very large schools of hammerheads and mantas – pretty much guaranteed. But that’s another story and another trip…..

Contact me for more information:

Alison.boler@bsactravelclub.co.uk

Cabo PDS: http://www.caboprodive.com/
Solmar V Diving: http://www.solmar.com/solmarv/
Los Cabos Restaurant Guide: http://www.loscabosguide.com/lacasacountry/
Los Cabos Hotel Guide: http://los.cabos.hotelguide.net/


Getting There: You can fly to Cabo San Lucas (SJD) direct via United Airlines sometimes. Otherwise you can fly to Mexico City and then route on or into a number of US gateways eg Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Phoenix or Los Angeles and pick up a short haul flight. I discuss this at length in my report on The Sea of Cortez/La Paz. Also see that report for comments regarding Health, Immigration, Currency and all other visitor information.

Getting Around:
Taxis are plentiful and very cheap. You can travel around town for a couple of dollars. We had a rental car because we were travelling around Baja. Driving and parking in town was reasonable. Signage in Mexico in general is very poor by our standards and the traffic light system can be a bit odd particularly the way filtering arrows appear to work. If you hire a car make sure you take full insurance including CDW.
One interesting story: we were coming back from San Jose Del Cabo one evening after dinner and got a bit lost in the maze of small streets there. We came to a junction where the way ahead was completely blocked by a police car sideways on as in a road block. We couldn’t reverse, so after waiting a few minutes we did the only other thing we could do and that was to turn left into an even smaller dark street. Within seconds our rear view mirror was full of a flashing blue light. Two policemen approached us and informed us that this was a one way street (no sign and no cars indicating traffic direction, how could we know?) and that our car would have to be impounded and we would be fined. Eek. Luckily discussions in La Paz with Dean a retired California Highpay Patrol Officer (yes! CHIPS) had prepared us for this eventuality. Apparently Mexican Traffic Police are extremely poorly paid and their wages are not enough to live on, so every month around payday they have to earn a little extra – it’s well known and tacitly accepted! A bit like a tip to a waiter. In this situation the correct response is to remain calm and polite and to say “Thank you, officer, and how much will it be if I pay my fine here and now to avoid my car being impounded? I have to get my wife/child/dog back to the hotel as it is very late”. The answer was £20, no ticket or receipt was issued J and everyone drove away smiling.

Never try this approach in the U.S. or the U.K.


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