My wife and I are going to Baja California next May for our honeymoon. We chose Baja because we wanted to go somewhere neither of us had been before that wouldn’t break the bank nor require a 12 hour airplane flight. We’re on the west coast of the U.S.
I was happy to leave the arrangements to her. I hate traveling. I hate everything about traveling. Airports, flying, taxis, the whole business of actually getting from A to B, including the planning thereof, is odious. I usually enjoy myself once I’m at my destination, though, if there’s something interesting to do.
My workmate loves Baja, and recently bought some land down there. He started showing me pictures of his land, and the house he stays in when he visits, and the beach, and the desert, and the empty desert, and the empty beach, and more empty desert… and that’s when I started wondering what in the hell I got myself into. I looked at some rental houses on the internet – places we were thinking of booking. Every one of them looks like a house stuck out in the middle of the desert with absolutely nothing around it. Not even a tree. A house in the middle of the desert. We will be staying near El Pescadero, which is possibly a few houses and a coffee shop. It is south of Todos Santos, which is a burg of a thousand or so, with a grocery store and and a hotel (the Hotel California!) It’s 30 miles or so north of Cabo, where I think there are a lot of tourists. It’s about an hour from La Paz, the capital of Baja Sur.
I’m just not sure what I’m going to do there. I am not the sort of person who wants to lie on an empty beach all day. Neither do I want to lie in a hammock and read for a week. I enjoy people watching and absorbing the culture, and seeing interesting things, but it looks like we are kind of removed from that. I am envisioning a week of isolation and boredom. That can’t be true, can it? Have any dopers been there? What did you do? What would you recommend? Someone please ease my mind. I’m getting a really bad attitude about the trip, and I don’t want to harsh my lover’s buzz by getting myself all down in the dumps about this stupid trip. Any advice?
Cabo is a lot of fun. Many things to do and lots of people to “watch” and interact with. If at all possible, change your accommodation plans and get a place around Cabo.
If you absolutely have to stay in El Pescadero, plan on having a car so that you can drive the 30 miles down to Cabo at least some of the days you are in Baja. The Mexican government does a pretty good job maintaining Highway 19, but get to where you are going before dark! Livestock are sometimes in the road and you can’t see them at night.
Stay in Cabo if you want to be on Spring Break with thousands of twenty-something Americans. If you don’t want that, consider someplace else in Mexico. Maybe Mazatlan?
Don’t get me wrong-- I’ve doe a few short trips to Cabo and they were fun. But I wasn’t on my honeymoon…
Well we’ve already booked the place in El Pescadero, though we could get out of it if we have to. I think the wife wants to stay there. We’ll rent a car – it looks like an absolute necessity if we want to see another human or buy anything to eat – and they’re dirt cheap. We’ll drive to La Paz so the wife can swim with sharks & shit one day. And we’ll go to Cabo to rent scooters one day. Aside from that…
I am still trying to figure out what these people who rent isolated places in the sticks actually do all day.
We won’t be there during spring break so I don’t think party hordes will be a problem. I’ve been to Guadalajara once and Cancun a handful of times. I have a feeling – a hopeful feeling – that it will be more interesting than I’m expecting. If worse comes to worse, we’ll just hole up for a week and have a lot of sex. I really really enjoy that, but we don’t have to go to Mexico to have great sex. Although it’s for sure the kids won’t be around to disturb us.
It’s always Spring Break in Cabo. Again, I had a good time when I went, but I didn’t “experience Mexico” there, as it’s a huge tourist trap for Americans. Based on your OP it sounds like the last place you’d want to be. Now, I’m talking about the resort area, and you’re not going to be there. You’ll be out in the boonies. Just don’t expect a trip to the resort area to be much more than seeing a bunch of young Americans on vacation.
The Spring Break/Senor Frogs bullshit is pretty much relegated to the actual town of Cabo San Lucas - you don’t have to go there, really - there are two towns at the tip of the peninsula. If you will have a car, make a trip into San Jose del Cabo, which is the little town to the east of Cabo San Lucas. Much more autentico vibe there. Very good food, a beautiful town square with a bandstand, ladies selling tamales at sundown. No neon bikini contests or tequila chugging. I see you already booked in Pescadero, but if I were you, I’d ditch that plan and find a place in SJdC.
Seconding the suggestions on planning to not drive after dark. There’s basically no shoulder and the paved road just drops off into sand/sagebrush scrub/some cliffs, so one brief second of inattention and you could be stranded in the desert or smashed at the bottom of an arroyo. Enroute from SJdC to Todos Santos, my brother and I sat for a long time waiting for a wreck between a passenger car and a fuel truck to be cleared. Most of the fuel truck was waaaaayyy down in a gulch.
Thanks for the advice orderfire. Since we’ll have a car and will be driving every day, I think we’ll keep the accommodations in El Pescadero and plan a day trip to SJdeC one day, La Paz another day, Todos Santos pretty much every day…
I realized when looking through photos of Baja Sur why it holds little appeal to me – I was raised in an isolated desert setting, so spending my vacation there is not an exotic foreign experience. It’s more likely to give me an itch to go somewhere else – somewhere with people and culture. But I can put up with anything for a week. And there is the ocean right there, which is something Idaho lacks.
You could also ferry over to Mazatlan for a couple days. There is nothing deserty there.
La Paz is a nice city, along the water front. It reminded me of your average European city on the Med, but with more water activities like parasailing, and it seemed like the “good” part went back a reasonable ways from the waterfront. Beyond the waterfront, it was more like being in a run-down Fresno (but hey, it’s Mexico).
Baja Sur is, indeed, desert. Some people love desert-scapes and think they’re beautiful. Personally, and it sounds like you might agree, I think it looks rather blah. Mostly, I just dislike that you can’t go hiking into nature, since it’s all full of plants with thorns or hard points, and no animals more lovely than scorpions and snakes. (Not that you should approach any animal in nature - but at least some of them are nice to look at.)
That all said, El Pescadero is quite a ways out from La Paz.
Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo, and Todos Santos will probably be the main places you want to go.
San Lucas has all the bars and places for drunk teenagers to go. But it does also have a number of nice restaurants, a huge mall with lots of nice things in it, and a few nice movie theaters. There’s a lot of good water activities and beaches in town and in the surrounding areas.
Todos Santos has a number of nice art galleries, as well as nice restaurants and is a pretty nice town. You should like spending time there.
San Jose is another nice, pleasant town. Of course, I don’t know that it will offer anything Todos Santos doesn’t.
There’s many small, nice villages scattered all through the peninsula. Driving up towards La Paz and stopping in anywhere that looks nice wouldn’t be a bad way to spend your time, even if you don’t go all the way to La Paz. It can be fun to walk around the villages. I can probably get you a list of a few places to try out if that interests you.
There’s a number of places with race cars, either on or off a track in that area. They’ll mostly be centered around San Lucas, but all of them are a ways out from San Lucas, so probably one or two are out your way. Similarly, there’s a lot of horse riding circuits that you can do.
If you like looking at fancy houses, you can always tell a local realtor that you’re looking, and you’ll get a tour of some places.
There are some golf courses between San Lucas and San Jose. I’m not sure if there are any on the Todos Santos side.
My brother says that El Pescadero is a pretty nice town. Besides it and Todos Santos, he also suggested checking out Cerritos. He recommends Cabo Pulmo, but that might be more of a drive than it’s worth from where you will be.
Hello and thanks for the feedback everyone. Sage Rat, I think we’ll have a nice time. A big thanks for the info. We are really only there for 6 days, and two of those are partially travel days. I’m looking forward to it. And maybe now, Arrendajo will too.
It is honeymoon. Not want to be rude, but it is IMHO and might sound like some sarcastic asshole.
“Honeymoon. Middle of nowhere. Hmm… What to do, what to do? I know! Let us go fry ourselves in the desert!”
Take the boats out to the tip of the cape. You can take pretty much anyone leaving the dock and come back on any one leaving the beach. Take beach stuff, and cash for tips. The lifeguard and boat guys aren’t paid otherwise.
I plan on going fishing one day with or without my husband.
Thanks a bunch for the feedback everyone, especially you, Sage Rat. Your description of Baja put my mind at ease. It sounds like it might involve a little more driving than I wanted to do, but I can deal with that. Anyway, my wife will probably want to do all the driving (control issues, she freely admits) which leaves me free to navigate and gawk at the scenery. Your description of La Paz is interesting – several people told me it’s not worth visiting because it’s just a typical Mexican city. A typical Mexican city sounds vastly more interesting than empty desert, but to each to his own. I think we’ll be just fine there, and if worse comes to worse we’ll just crawl into bed naked and poke each other’s sunburns.
Show the wife " 5 best things to do in El Pescadero" on the Travel Advisor website.
(Hint) There ain’t nothing going on! A skatepark?! Maybe that will convince her to allow you to change your location to Cabo.
Hilarious! Mini Super Munchie – a convenience store – is listed as one of the 5 best things to do in El Pescadero.
That reminds me of the time in Lima Perú when we stopped into a Chifa for some Chinese food. It was not only the worst Chinese meal we had ever had, it was the worst meal we had in Lima, and possibly the worst restaurant meal we had ever had – in Lima, of all places – the gastronomic capital of South America! Instead of getting angry and disappointed, though, we got out our travel diary and meticulously noted every aspect of the meal, from the tasteless broth to the filthy restroom. It was good for laughs, and the only bad meal we had for the entire stay.
Fortunately we have a car and will be seeing the sights outside of El Pisscadero.
Yeah, overall, I’d suggest sticking to Mexican food.
Try asking for the best taqueria in Todos Santos. It’ll probably make you pretty happy (though, sight unseen, I’ll hazard a guess that it will look more like someone’s backyard than like a restaurant).
Todos Santos is a perfectly fine little town, with hotels that range from scruffy to quite nice. There’s a fun place called Art and Beer a few miles south, which is what you think it is, with decent food. But that part of Mexico is sort of quiet and more about taking it easy. If you’re really looking for more to do, like ruins, activities, art museums, etc., I suggest reconsidering your destination. The Yucatan has beaches, Mayan ruins, nature preserves, freshwater snorkeling in giant natural wells, a big old colonial town (Merida)…easily drivable between different locations though you may have some long drives.