Do you want your Tequila straight or… ‘Más Suave’?
– A No BS Article by David Mandich – Baja California Real Estate Advisor & Consulting
Cabo San Lucas, just a two beer flight away from Southern California, is quickly replacing Hawaii as the preferred exotic vacation destination for quick trips and second home purchases for many Americans. Almost three million tourists travel to Baja California Sur every year visiting its towns, bays, beaches, islands and golf courses with an average stay of 3.5 days.
Some, like me, come to visit and never return. Some stay for a week and return to the United States with a stuffed swordfish, a condo, a dental makeover, or breast implants. Makeovers are big here, from cosmetic dental and plastic surgery to lifestyle. It’s about feeling and being young again. With the Nikki-Beach Club in Cabo to any of the abounding surfing, golfing, fishing or gentlemen’s clubs, Los Cabos is sure to bring your lifestyle back to life.
International bilingual schools for children through high school are available in Cabo and San José. And the tuition is ridiculously cheap. Maybe $300 a year. More people should consider bringing the little ones to live here. It’s safer than big US cities, the kids at school respect their teachers, and there are lots of fun things to do in the desert and on the water right at your fingertips.
So how do you make it happen? How do you find the building lot, condo or ocean view home of your dreams? Where do you find the perfect home for your lifestyle and, according to many people, a home that is a good investment? Looking for Cabo? San Jose del Cabo? The mysterious Eastern Cape? The artist colony of Todos Santos? Or maybe somewhere in between?
Let’s start with Cabo San Lucas proper
Cabo San Lucas is the top tourist destination for people visiting the Los Cabos area for the first time. It sits in the Bay of Cabo San Lucas, which is flanked on the west by a series of monumental rock formations known as Land’s End. This outcrop of land is the end of the nearly thousand-mile Baja Peninsula where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez.
Water and air temperatures can be 20 degrees cooler a few hundred feet on either side of the point. Inside you can snorkel in warm, clear waters teeming with colorful tropical fish around the underwater pinnacles of the cove known as Playa del Amor. The fish will literally eat out of your hand, as everyone has heard that the place is a sanctuary of hunt. This is what all the tourist brochures say. But the reality is, all the damn fish in the Sea of Cortez will eat out of your hand any day of the week if you have bread, tortillas, or fish entrails in your hand!
You can find crystal clear snorkeling water for the next 900 miles starting in Cabo and continuing through the inland Sea of Cortez. If your fantasy spot in the sun includes water sports, start in Cabo, head east, then north until you find your piece of paradise. And you can surf and wind
surfing all the way around the East Cape.
The Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula is generally rougher, cooler in the (nice) summer, and compared to the Sea of Cortez, underwater visibility for divers is much lower. But compared to anywhere back home in the US, ALL GOOD. Some say it is paradise. If you want cooler temperatures on the Southern California coast in the summer, since you plan to live here year-round, start looking north of Cabo. The land rush in this area at the moment is Cerritos, Pescadero and Todos Santos.
Next: Luxury homes and condos as investments in Cabo San Lucas