When Gaspar de Portolá, the new California governor, sailed into San José del Cabo on Nov. 30, 1767, “the soldiers, who had come with exaggerated notions about the wealth of the Jesuit missions, hastened to seize the treasures of Mission San José del Cabo; but, with the exception of the church ornaments, nothing of value was discovered,” wrote Zephyrin Engelhardt in his 1908 book on the Spanish missionary period, “The Missions and Missionaries of California: Vol. 1, Lower California.” 

“They then proceeded to Mission Santiago and encountered the same poverty. Like all the Jesuits in the missions, Father (Ignacio) Tirsch of Santiago had not the least suspicion of what was coming, and no reason or opportunity for concealing anything. Portolá next took his men to the silver mines and convinced himself of their poverty, and the penury of those who feebly worked them.”

José de Gálvez and the shift in Franciscan focus

After a little more than 70 years of missionary work on the Baja California peninsula, the Jesuits had accumulated no wealth but had founded 17 missions and “saved many souls.” 

The Franciscans, who replaced them, would remain in Baja California for only five years, establish only one mission — the Misión San Fernando Rey de España de Velicatá, about 35 miles southeast of El Rosario — and leave the peninsula’s missions even poorer than they already were.

The Franciscans were chosen as successors to the Jesuits by José de Gálvez, the visitador general, whose newly endowed authority had made him the most powerful man in Mexico (or Nueva España, as it was then known). 

Gálvez arrived in July 1768 to reorganize the peninsula, unveiling his plans for California to the dozen or so Franciscan friars, led by Mallorcan Junípero Serra, who himself had only been in residence since April. 

The most ambitious of these plans was the commitment to establishing missions in Alta California — now the U.S. state of California. How much of this shift in focus northward was influenced by the evident poverty of the missions in Baja California is unknown. However, by early 1769, land and sea expeditions were bound for San Diego. By July of that year, Serra had founded the first Alta California mission there. Serra would later found eight more missions in Alta California, an achievement for which he has since been controversially canonized as a saint by the Catholic church. 

Portolá, also integral to the expedition, saw his role as governor expand to include both Alta and Baja California.  

How Baja California paid for the settlement of Alta California

Not everyone benefited from this northern focus, which by 1777 had seen the capital of Las Californias shift from Loreto in Baja California to Monterey in Alta California. To be blunt, the settlement of Alta California was largely paid for by looting the meager coffers of Baja California’s missions and squeezing money from the peninsula’s lone successful entrepreneur. 

“To lessen the expenses for the proposed missions, Gálvez decided that the old establishments (the missions in Baja California) should aid in founding the new ones by donating vestments, sacred vessels and other church articles,” Engelhardt wrote. “From the inventories, he saw that all could assist a little, which, with what he had obtained from the extinguished missions, would supply at least three new missions. He himself proceeded to Todos Santos to collect what could be spared, and he directed Fr. Serra to do likewise on his trip to the north from all the missions, not excepting Loreto.”

Also contributing was the one rich man the peninsula had so far produced: former soldier Manuel de Ocio. After reaping some timely intel from Cochimí Indians about 400 pounds of pearls thrown onto a beach in Mulegé after a violent storm in 1740, Ocio retired from the Loreto presidio to found a mine at Santa Ana in 1748, a few miles south of the Baja California Sur mining towns that subsequently sprang up in San Antonio and El Triunfo.

Ocio’s mine wasn’t that impressive in terms of the amount of silver it produced, but by 1751, it had reached the limit necessary for him to register it with the Spanish crown and pay taxes. In addition to the workforce of 300 he acquired, many from the Mexican mainland, he also ran thousands of head of cattle and managed to buy 14 homes in Guadalajara as a real estate investment. 

Gálvez, seeing that Ocio had what little wealth there was on the peninsula, established his headquarters at Santa Ana and ruthlessly pumped the mine owner to help fund the expedition to Alta California. Indeed, according to Harry W. Crosby’s definitive book, “Antigua California, Mission and Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, 1697-1768”: 

“Manuel de Ocio’s little empire provided the ship that made possible Portolá’s coming; the further use of his ships, his mules, mule drivers and stores made possible the prompt launching of the expedition to the north. Without that which was commandeered from Ocio, Gálvez’s plans would have had long setbacks. But Ocio received no thanks and ultimately no reward nor even the recompense promised by royal officials.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, two of Gálvez’s imported miners murdered Ocio in 1771 after robbing his storehouse.

Indigenous peoples and the disaster of Gálvez’s policies

If Ocio was ill-used by Gálvez, so, too, were the Indigenous peoples of the Baja California peninsula. Gálvez believed the Jesuits had coddled the Indians; he was intent on using them as a free labor source, including in the salt mines at Isla del Carmen, off the coast of Loreto. 

“Gálvez made elaborate plans for the transformation of the California missions using Serra and the Franciscans as the agents for the changes he thought necessary,” author Dave Werschkul pointed out in “Saints and Demons in a Desert Wilderness: A History and Guide to Baja California’s Spanish Missions” (2003):

“Among Gálvez’s decrees were the reduction in the number of missions, elimination of the visitas (sub-missions), and the movement of Indians from one area to another to meet the labor requirements of the more productive agricultural areas. The results were a disaster. In 1769, one ranchería of 44 Indians was moved from San Javier to San José del Cabo. All but three died.”

The native inhabitants of Los Cabos, the Pericú, also saw their numbers continue to dwindle. In 1768, the year the Franciscans took over, there were 178 Indians at the Santiago mission under Fr. José Murguía and 70 at San José del Cabo, which had been raised back to full mission status under Fr. Juan Morán. Three years later, in 1771, those numbers were 70 and 50, respectively, or a total of only 120 throughout Los Cabos. 

Likely, these were mostly still Pericú, although as noted above, Gálvez was not above importing Indigenous people from other parts of the peninsula to help facilitate agricultural production for the missions.

Disease remained the primary culprit for the diminished numbers. Many Indigenous people were killed by the 1769 epidemic that also killed Fr. Morán, as well as the French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, who had traveled to San José del Cabo to observe the 1769 Transit of Venus, which he did successfully before his death. 

The exact disease that decimated Indigenous numbers is not known. An outbreak of measles was known to have occurred that year, with typhus and yellow fever also conjectured.

The Franciscan era’s legacy in Los Cabos

The Jesuits had been careful to keep the population of Baja California restricted to missionaries, Indigenous and presidio soldiers. Some soldiers were married. Esteban Rodríguez Lorenzo, for example, one of the original 10 to land at Loreto in 1697, married María de Larrea on the mainland during a hiatus from his duties in 1707. They had seven children, the first true family of settlers on the peninsula. Rodríguez was also the first man permitted by the Jesuits to raise his own cattle. 

But as local historian Pablo L. Martínez was quick to note in his “Guía Familiar de Baja California, 1700-1900” (1965), the first real secular community to arise on the peninsula came about because of the need for workers at Ocio’s mine. Santa Ana thus became a kind of cradle for early settlers, with some of the most esteemed Los Cabos families, such as the Cotas, arriving during this early period. 

Gálvez, for all his faults, was the first to initiate a call for colonists. 

“Besides making strong efforts to improve the conditions of the natives, Gálvez paid special attention to the project of colonizing Lower California with Spaniards,” Engelhardt wrote. “On Aug. 12, 1768, he issued a decree setting forth the privileges offered to colonists and the regulations by which they were to be governed. Government lands were separated from mission lands and offered to Spaniards of good character on easy terms. 

“The chief obligation was that the settlers would make improvements and pay a small annual tax to the king. The first to avail themselves of these advantages were discharged soldiers and sailors from Loreto, but there were few others before 1821.” 

These discharged soldiers, sailors and their families, along with the workforce at Santa Ana, would form the roots of the communities that would eventually arise in San José del Cabo, Cabo San Lucas and elsewhere in the region now known as Los Cabos. 

But, first, there was one more Catholic missionary order to come to the area — that of the Dominicans, who took over the missions in Baja California after 1773, when the Franciscans decided to concentrate their efforts solely on Alta California. 

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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Nor has Ensenada’s popularity as a cruise destination ever waned. It remains the third most popular cruise port in the country — behind Cozumel and Mahahual (Costa Maya) in Quintana Roo and ahead of fellow Pacific Coast ports Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta — and has welcomed in excess of 1 million cruise ship passengers in two of the past three years.

Based on a recent announcement, that number should only continue to rise.

Ensenada Bay Village project unveiled

Plans for Ensenada Bay Village — a new shoreside port destination for cruise ship passengers that’s being developed in partnership between Carnival, Hutchison Ports ECV and the ITM Group — were announced during a public presentation at the Ensenada Cruise Terminal in early December 2025.

The US $26 million project is expected to take two years to complete, but will welcome up to 9,000 visitors per day and have a significant economic impact on Ensenada, creating at least 350 new jobs and bringing in an estimated $120 million to the local economy each year.

“Ensenada Bay Village represents meaningful investment in Baja California,” noted Baja California’s governor, Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda. “This project supports local jobs, expands tourism and highlights the culture and natural beauty that make our state a unique destination,” she said. 

What will Ensenada Bay Village’s attractions be?

Ensenada Bay Village is going to be a village-style port resort, steps from where ships are docked. Cruise passengers will be able to enjoy not only swimming pools, thermal springs and spa offerings but also wine and cheese pairings, tequila tastings and activities like zip lines, a scenic boat ride and a dune buggy rally.

By design, the village — with architecture that evokes 18th-century mission-era California — is meant to appeal to both kids and adults and be family-friendly. Ensenada Bay Village is also envisioned as a complementary attraction, which perhaps accounts for the fact that, as yet, there have been no controversies or complaints from local businesses that rely heavily on business from the cruise ships.

Will Ensenada Bay Village be free for cruise ship passengers?

Costs to cruisegoers are as yet unknown. Carnival has not revealed whether there will be admission fees or premium charges for the various rides and attractions. Nor is there any rush to announce this information, given that Ensenada Bay Village — based on its two-year construction timeline — is not due to open until late 2027 or early 2028. 

What does Ensenada Bay Village mean for other cruise lines?

Carnival Corporation is the world’s largest cruise company, owning not only Carnival Cruise Lines but also, among other subsidiaries, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line. 

However, despite Carnival Corporation’s dominant market share in Ensenada (it accounted for 71% of all cruise visits in 2023-2024), its cruise lines are not the only ones that visit the destination; Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Disney-owned ships are all frequent visitors too. Are their passengers also welcome at Ensenada Bay Village?

The answer is yes. “The destination will also welcome guests from other cruise lines, reinforcing a shared commitment to inclusive tourism and regional growth,” Carnival confirmed in a statement. 

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that pricing will be the same for passengers of other cruise lines — again, no pricing information has yet been released — or that non-Carnival-owned cruise lines will recommend Ensenada Bay Village with the same enthusiasm as they do other local attractions.

That said, Carnival’s investment in Ensenada is a reflection of just how strong its presence is in the port, and Ensenada Bay Village will almost certainly benefit other cruise lines. 

Who’s developing Ensenada Bay Village?

Hutchison Ports ECV and the ITM Group are the companies developing Ensenada Bay Village, in partnership with Carnival, and the US $26 million figure quoted for the project is considered a minimum investment.

Mexican-owned ITM Group is a specialist in hospitality and cruise port development and management. More to the point, ITM has a history of collaborations with cruise lines, having partnered with Royal Caribbean Cruises since 2019 on port projects under the Holistica Destinations banner, a 50-50 venture that includes operation of the Port of Roatán in Honduras. 

ITM was also instrumental in developing Puerto Costa Maya at Mahahual in Quintana Roo, Mexico’s second-largest cruise port, although that concession was subsequently shared as a Holistica Destinations partnership and is now solely administered by Royal Caribbean.

Given this history, ITM Group was a logical partner for Carnival in Ensenada. So, too, was Hutchison Ports ECV, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings Limited, since this company has the concession (acquired via the government of Mexico) for the Ensenada Cruise Terminal. The Ensenada Bay Village project would not be possible without Hutchison’s participation.

What is the Baja California Sur connection?

ITM Group, notably, also acquired the concession for developing the Port of Pichilingue in La Paz, Baja California Sur’s capital. Aquamayan Adventures, which shares the same owner as ITM Group — entrepreneur Isaac Hamui Abadi — had plans to build a new US $50 million cruise pier there, but after environmental protests, that project was scuttled in 2022.

Still, Baja-based cruise ports do seem to be on the rise, with both Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas recording robust visitor numbers in 2025, and La Paz also seeing strong traffic. For example, Mexico welcomed 8.7 million cruise ship passengers between January and October 2025, and was projected to finish the year with over 10 million, with the Baja California peninsula’s top three cruise ports accounting for more than 2.5 million of that total.

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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Sordo Madaleno is also responsible for the newest eye-catching design to arrive at Cabo del Sol: a boutique shopping destination for over 80 luxury brands.

 

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Ánima Village opens in Los Cabos

The first phase of Ánima Village premiered at Cabo del Sol in early December 2025, with over 1,500 guests showing up to celebrate the opening. Already open are more than two dozen shops featuring brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Guess, Hugo Boss, Lululemon, the Mac Store and Nike. More upscale brands are on the way in the next phase, scheduled for later this year, including Cartier, Dior, Prada, Valentino and Louis Vuitton. 

When complete, Ánima Village will be by far the most sophisticated shopping destination in Los Cabos. In addition to its anticipated 84 luxury brands, it will feature diverse dining options, art exhibitions, open-air walkways with botanical gardens and a range of regular events and programs.

“Art and culture are central to Ánima Village’s identity,” notes SOMA Group, the Mexican real estate development company led by members of the Sordo Madaleno family that operates Ánima Village. “The project features Arte Abierto, a dedicated gallery space that hosts rotating exhibitions, permanent installations throughout public areas, and an active cultural program. This initiative invites visitors to engage directly with the creative process, making them part of the ongoing artistic narrative.”

Of course, given Sordo Madaleno’s architectural reputation, this aspect, too, is first-class. Buildings “rise and fall in volumes ranging from 6 to 9.5 meters, creating a dynamic rhythm reminiscent of a coastal village. This stepped geometry not only frames shifting views of the landscape but also incorporates passive climate strategies — terraces open to public plazas, while shadows and landscaping provide comfort and shade, encouraging visitors to pause and enjoy the environment.”

Despite being located beyond the gate at Cabo del Sol, Ánima Village is open to the public daily between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.

The history of Cabo del Sol

Cabo del Sol owes its existence to the visionary foresight of legendary Los Cabos developer Don Koll. During the mid-1980s, the Southern California real estate heavyweight made a series of moves that would forever change the landscape of Los Cabos. In 1985, he purchased the land for what would become Cabo del Sol in partnership with Robert Addison Day from Bud Parr, another Los Cabos pioneer. The next year, Koll bought the landmark Hotel Palmilla (now One&Only Palmilla) and brought in Jack Nicklaus to design golf courses for both, the first world-class layouts in the area. 

“Koll knew from time in the area developing Palmilla Hotel resort that this property [Cabo del Sol], with its gradual sloping terrain and two miles of pristine ocean frontage, was the best property in Cabo,” Day told Cabo Living Magazine in 2019. “Anywhere you put your finger on the map, you had an ocean view from the property. So Don and I struck a deal to buy the property in a joint venture between our two companies. Don took the role as operator and lead developer in those years, leveraging the expertise and team they already had in place at Palmilla and immediately began adding value.”

Two parcels were sold off to hotels for capital: the Sheraton Hacienda del Mar (now the all-inclusive Hacienda del Mar) and Grand Fiesta Americana, both of which opened in 1999. Accompanying these early Cabo del Sol tent poles were Jack Nicklaus’ stunning Cabo del Sol Ocean Course (now the Cove Club), which opened to acclaim in 1994, and Tom Weiskopf’s Desert Course, which followed in 2001. 

Koll may have been the visionary, but Day was, practically speaking, the most important figure in Cabo del Sol’s history. The grandson of William Myron Keck, founder of Superior Oil Company — later sold to Mobil for US $5.7 billion in 1984 — Day made his own fortune, selling the Trust Company of the West, which he founded in 1971, for $2.5 billion. The Oakmont Corporation, which he began in 1980 and for which he served as CEO, would later buy out Koll for ownership of Cabo del Sol and oversee its development for decades before Day passed away in 2023.

Cabo del Sol’s revival

Cabo del Sol’s golf courses were designed to sell the accompanying real estate, which they have been doing for 40 years and counting. But over the last few years, a series of luxury resort openings, along with Ánima Village, have ushered in what can only be called a resurgence. This has been led by the arrival of several properties from big-name hospitality brands that not only provide stylish accommodations to visitors but also amenities like restaurants and spas that residents can enjoy.

The first to open was Four Seasons Resort and Residences Cabo San Lucas at Cabo del Sol, which premiered in May 2024 with 96 guest rooms and 61 branded residences, the latter including luxe villas and estates. The following year, saw the announcement that Hacienda del Mar would transition to an all-inclusive resort, as well as the opening of Park Hyatt Los Cabos at Cabo del Sol, with its 163 guestrooms and enormous 59,000-square-foot fitness and wellness center, the largest in Los Cabos. 

This year,  trendy Soho House will open its first phase at Cabo del Sol, showcasing 15 bedrooms, 12 casas and three spacious casonas, along with a branded Soho Health Club. Phase 2, still to come, will feature 45 private residences, ranging from two-to four-bedrooms and five villas with three and four-bedrooms. Yes, Soho House, too, is being designed by Sordo Madaleno.

This flurry of openings, combined with the arrival of Ánima Village, has established Cabo del Sol, 40 years after its birth, as the most impressive resort and residential community in Los Cabos. Interestingly, perhaps, given this ascendance, Oakmont Corporation sold a controlling interest of 51% in Cabo del Sol holdings to RLH Properties, a Mexico City-based asset management company in September 2025. 

But that doesn’t change the resort inventory or the many real estate offerings still available. Or the location of the best new shopping destination in Los Cabos.

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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“And yet, I believe there are multitudes of people, accustomed to receive injunctions of new year resolutions, who will sin all the month of December, with a serious determination of beginning the new year with new resolutions and new behaviour, and with the full belief that they shall thus expiate and wipe away all their former faults.”

Nowadays, resolutions are almost always made in good faith. You may not develop six-pack abs or read the entirety of the Harvard Classics, but such resolutions reflect an honest desire to improve mind, body and spirit. And if you fail, there’s always next year.

But no one starts out believing they will fail, which is why travel to destinations such as Los Cabos may be viewed with trepidation. Enjoying luxurious accommodations and beautiful beaches during the heart of winter may sound like a recipe for indolence and idleness. In fact, the opposite is true. Los Cabos is the perfect place to maintain your resolutions, if only for a week or two until you’re back on home turf. 

Getting more exercise

Virtually every resort in Los Cabos has a gym and fitness facilities, while the best may offer everything from yoga classes to guest visits from U.S.-based fitness instructors. That’s not to mention additional amenities like tennis courts or access to world-class golf courses. 

This brings us to the real power of Los Cabos as a resolution-friendly destination: its wealth of outdoor-activities. There is almost nothing under the sun — yes, it shines every day, even in January — that you can’t do, and at a high-level, in Los Cabos. The surfing is superb, as is the fishing, sailing, kayaking and swimming (in the ocean or in indoor pools). On dry land, there’s hiking and biking, for starters, and several local activities companies provide guided climbing or mountain biking tours, for those who aren’t sure where to start or to find the most scenic trails.

That’s not to say you won’t have time for relaxing on local beaches. But you’ll get your cardio, too, even if it’s just counting your steps while you walk around downtown Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo.

Eating healthier food

If your goal is to lose weight or simply to eat healthier, whole foods, Los Cabos is the place to be. Famed for its farm-to-table restaurants featuring produce grown steps from where it’s served, the Los Cabos food scene is premised on using fresh, local ingredients. 

That mantra extends to restaurants at hotels and resorts, where chefs frequently source many of their ingredients from organic farming communities like Miraflores, or from their own onsite gardens. Yes, you can binge on tacos. But processed foods will be minimal to nonexistent in that case, too.

The most famous ingredients aren’t fruits or vegetables, though, but freshly-caught local seafood. Those who go out fishing can have their catches prepared “you hook it, we cook it” style. But you don’t have to catch your own to enjoy delicious, Omega-3-rich tuna or dorado (aka mahi-mahi or dolphinfish) at almost every seaside restaurant in the area. 

Sleeping better

Every time I’m invited to spend a night or two at a local resort, I marvel at the quality of my sleep. That’s not an accident. They work at it, from king-sized beds to temperature control to blackout curtains.

It helps, of course, if you’ve spent part of your day swimming, hiking or biking. But local properties, already masters of wellness (more on this soon), have increasingly been rolling out programs and initiatives aimed at better sleep. Thus, just as your fitness and food consumption are apt to improve while on vacation in Los Cabos, so too is your sleep. 

Taking better care of your mind and body

Good physical condition and mental health are inextricably linked. As the ancient Roman writer Juvenal once pointed out, the goal is mens sana in corpore sano, a “healthy mind in a healthy body.”

The idea that you’re beach walking in shorts while your friends are freezing back home is certain to make you feel a little better about the start of a New Year. But there are many more amenities designed to improve both physical and mental health (such as eliminating schadenfreude). Foremost among these is the area’s world-class collection of pampering wellness spas, which offer everything from hydrotherapy to meditation and mindfulness programs. 

Most of all, there’s the power of blue spaces. Meaning, the restorative power of being near the ocean, which more than any other landscape, has been shown to relieve stress. In Los Cabos, with its 125 miles of coastline featuring spectacular views of two major bodies of water — the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of California (or Sea of Cortés as it’s known locally — blue spaces abound. So too does restfulness and relaxation. 

The cherry on top

If all of the above hasn’t convinced you that Los Cabos is actually where you need to be to start 2026, and a resolution to be added to your New Year’s list, let me add another interesting tidbit. The cost of accommodation for rooms at Los Cabos hotels and resorts is the lowest in recent memory. In January 2024, for instance, the average daily room rate in Los Cabos was US $533. By January 2025, that number had dipped slightly to $508. 

According to the most recently released figures from November 2025, the average rate is now $421, and in some parts of the municipality, even less. In Cabo San Lucas, it’s only $280, in San José del Cabo, $283. 

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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So noted Víctor Castro Cosío, governor of Baja California Sur, recently regarding a project to help keep infrastructure in line with Los Cabos’ unprecedented growth. 

No, the subject was not the Fonatur roundabout upgrade in San José del Cabo, a massive 469 million peso project aimed at improving traffic flow in the municipality’s busiest traffic node (an estimated 60,000 plus vehicles daily). Although work was recently suspended for the holidays, that project is 62% complete and scheduled to finish on time this summer. 

Rather, what the governor was referring to, per Peninsular Digital, was the official December launch of “Unidos por Los Cabos.”

United for Los Cabos

The new project is actually a comprehensive master plan that combines several other programs and projects under the larger banner of improving mobility and urban image in Los Cabos. Announced just last month, Unidos por Los Cabos has many ambitious goals — and 300 million pesos with which to tackle them. 

One of the goals, for example, is to significantly reduce traffic accidents in the municipality. There were 8,000 of these in the five years between 2018 and 2023 and Unidos por Los Cabos is aiming to reduce this number by 20% and improve mobility generally through 200 new safe pedestrian crossings and rehabilitated sidewalks, 120 new well-marked bus stops, and, perhaps most importantly, the remodeling of “critical nodes” to help traffic flow more safely and efficiently through busy intersections. 

More green spaces and benchmarks to reach

However, this is only one of many objectives Unidos por Los Cabos is targeting, along with the creation of sports facilities and 20 parks to provide the municipality with more green spaces, and the beautification of the historic downtown centers of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo. 

“This program is designed to involve all sectors,” affirmed Los Cabos Mayor Christian Agúndez Gómez. “The combined efforts will improve the urban landscape and strengthen mobility. Los Cabos belongs to all of us, and through coordinated work, we can move toward the municipality we want.”

What the governor and the mayor desire can also be glimpsed in the benchmarks they’ve set for Unidos por Los Cabos, which include not only a 20% reduction in traffic accidents but also a 15% improvement in travel times for local drivers.

Makeovers for downtown centers — and why they’re necessary

The rehabilitation, or beautification, promised to the downtown centers of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo is certainly needed … in Cabo San Lucas. The Land’s End city has seen nightclub sales plummet in recent years. They were down 20% in 2023 and a very concerning 50% in 2024. Much of this has been credited to the so-called “all-inclusive effect,” in which visitors largely eschew the region’s many attractions to take advantage of their chosen property’s all-inclusive amenities — including accommodations, food, beverages, and sometimes even onsite nightclubs.

This type of traveling certainly isn’t good for downtown business owners, but it must be noted that the problem is different in Cabo San Lucas than it is in San José del Cabo, for reasons that go well beyond the popularity of all-inclusives. The former’s downtown has never received anywhere near the attention lavished on the latter, and as a consequence, has languished in recent years due to problems generally related to poor aesthetics and a lack of infrastructure. Nor are bar owners the only ones hard hit by declining sales.

“Rehabilitation” clearly is needed. The 140 million pesos earmarked for this project in downtown Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo will be paid for through the hotel tax that funds FITURCA (the Los Cabos Tourism Board), and is expected to begin in early 2026 as part of the overall Unidos por Los Cabos master plan. 

How police and firefighters kept Los Cabos safe on Christmas Eve

Fifty-three people in Los Cabos spent Christmas Eve in jail as a result of the aptly named Operation Guadalupe-Reyes — holiday revelry in Mexico peaks between the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe on Dec. 12 and El Día de Reyes (Three Kings Day) on Jan. 6. Police set up mobile checkpoints and administered breathalyzers as part of an overall goal to reduce traffic accidents and keep roads safe during the holiday season. 

It was also a busy holiday for Cabo San Lucas bomberos, who responded to seven separate calls between the evening of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. One was to put out a house fire. Perhaps the most dramatic, however, was a call in which they prevented a local man from committing suicide. Several other calls were for medical assistance or minor fires.

Firefighters in San José del Cabo, meanwhile, also had a busy Christmas Eve, thanks to a head-on collision between a motorcycle and a pickup truck that saw one man (presumably the motorcyclist) transported for additional medical attention. 

Hopefully, local first responders were able to enjoy the holidays themselves at some point. Los Cabos saw nearly 90% occupancy rates at local hotels and resorts during late December, a number that translates to a very Merry Christmas for the destination as a whole. 

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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Several more local loops have been rated tops in their region. Diamante Dunes and Querencia were declared the “Best in Mexico” by Golf Digest and Golfweek, respectively, and Solmar Golf Links was recently named “Latin America’s Best Course” by the World Golf Awards.

The area’s rich array of world-class golf courses is amazing. But then, they have to be, since they’re also meant to sell luxury real estate.

Why golf is so important to real estate sales in Los Cabos

A 2017 study of more than 10,000 real estate transactions by researchers at Florida Atlantic University showed that buying property near a golf course positively affected its value moving forward, boosting it by 8 to 12%. The researchers also noted, anecdotally, that golf itself is likely a lure to convince prospective homeowners to buy.

The latter assertion may not be backed up by statistical evidence. But it is taken for granted by many real estate developers, especially those in Mexico, where the second home market in destinations like Los Cabos is thriving. According to a recently published article in Barron’s, this is how the formula works: “In the golf real estate realm, developers build courses to sell houses. They hire big-name designers like Jack Nicklaus, Coore and Crenshaw, or Robert Trent Jones Jr. to lend star power to create an impressive 18 holes, confident the chance to play such a layout every day will draw buyers willing to pay millions for a second home or vacation escape.”

How golf and real estate in Los Cabos became synonymous

This formula has driven interest in resorts and real estate in Los Cabos since the early 1990s, when real estate magnate Don Koll brought in Nicklaus to design a course for Hotel Palmilla (now One&Only Palmilla), which he owned. Thirty years later, there are 18 currently operating golf courses in Los Cabos — a municipality with a population of about 350,000 — and at least three more are in the works. All serve as upscale amenities for resorts or real estate developments, or in some cases, both. 

Why big-name course designers cost more and why they matter?

Big names like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, the two most successful golfers ever and designers of eight, soon to be nine total courses in Los Cabos, do not come cheap. Whereas notable designers and major champions like Greg Norman and Ernie Els charge more than US $1 million per effort, Nicklaus and Woods, because of their exceptional star power, can command that and more … sometimes much more. Nicklaus’ fees are said to start in the range of $2-3 million, for example, while Woods’ fees are said to be even higher.

Of course, beyond bringing star power, their return on investment (ROI) for real estate is also high. To state the obvious, it’s not just that golf helps sell real estate in Los Cabos; it’s for how much.

Cabo del Sol

Cabo del Sol, a 1,800-acre luxury community a half dozen miles from Cabo San Lucas, is also home to Nicklaus’ Cove Club and Tom Weiskopf’s Cabo del Sol Course (currently under renovation), plus several luxurious resorts, including properties for Four Seasons, Park Hyatt, and soon, Soho House. It’s the real estate developments, however, that will benefit most from access to Nicklaus’ and Weiskopf’s loops. Homesites at the Cove Club start at US $3.7 million, villas at $8.6 million.

Diamante

At Diamante on the Pacific Coast of Cabo San Lucas, the biggest real estate development is the one surrounding Tiger Woods’ new invitation-only Legacy Club golf course and community, which is capped at only 250 members or families. List prices begin for homesites in Legacy Estates at $4 million, with larger homes in the range of $10 and $11 million. The Legacy Club is expected to open by the end of 2026.

Considering the Legacy Club course is reportedly going to take over from Tiger’s El Cardonal Course as the host of the PGA World Wide Technology Championship by 2027, the only PGA tournament in Los Cabos, expect list prices for nearby homesites in Legacy Estates, Legacy Villas and Legacy Gardens to remain robust.

Querencia

In Querencia, which is expecting a second course, Campo Alto, from acclaimed designer Tom Fazio in late 2026, prices likewise start in seven figures. At El Parque, a family-centric neighborhood of single-family homes and homesites in the upscale development, properties are now being listed between US $5.95 and $7.6 million.

Quivira

Signals are mixed on whether a second Jack Nicklaus course will ever be added to accompany the spectacular original, Quivira Golf Club, which opened in late 2014. However, real estate sales remain brisk regardless. Prive residences at St. Regis and Montecristo start at US $1 million, while 4- and 5-bedroom homes at Coronado are currently being listed for between $2.2 and $6.9 million.

Oleada

The 860-acre Oleada community is expecting its Ernie Els-designed golf course to open in 2026, while the 43 luxury two- and four-bedroom residences comprising the Conrad Residences at Oleada will be available beginning in 2027. Contact Hilton-owned Conrad for pricing information.

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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Baja California, or California as it was known then, centuries before the settlement of what is now the U.S. state, was a barren and remote land. Cortés saw 23 of his men die of starvation during his months in La Paz. Supplies had continually to be replenished from the mainland, and the Indigenous inhabitants of the peninsula — the Cochimí north of Loreto, the Guaycura from Loreto to Todos Santos, and the Pericú in what is now Los Cabos (as well as some offshore islands near La Paz) — were not always friendly to strangers.

Indeed, the Indigenous people were seen by the Europeans as brute savages. “In this most remote corner of the world,” noted Jesuit historian Miguel Venegas in the 18th century, “missionaries labored who were thoroughly devoted to the glory of the Divine Majesty, and whose virtue could not be tarnished even in the midst of such a rude people as the Californians.”

The Jesuit challenge

But unlike Cortés and Vizcaíno, who were motivated by greed for pearls, the Jesuits sought only to save souls. And unlike the pearlers who continued to make trips across the Gulf of California seeking riches and who treated the Indigenous as cheap labor, and were thus despised, the Jesuits first learned the Indigenous languages so they could explain the concept of Christ to the land’s native inhabitants in words they understood. 

But the supply difficulties were a constant threat, as were the Indigenous peoples, who tried on several occasions to kill the early padres. Worse yet, Salvatierra and Eusebio Kino, who had been obsessed with California since participating in Admiral Isidro de Atondo y Antillón’s attempt to establish a settlement at San Bruno from 1683 to 1685 — the longest attempt yet — received permission to try again only after agreeing to fund the early missions themselves. 

Kino, however, was unable to get permission to leave his post in the Pimería Alta when the time came, so Salvatierra, along with fellow Italian friar Francisco María Piccolo and Honduran Juan de Ugarte, would spearhead the founding of the first Jesuit missions, with Loreto, the first mission and the first capital of California, becoming the beachhead for 70 years of evangelical proselytizing on the peninsula.

The Pious Fund and the Marqués de Villapuente

From the constant need for financial support, the Pious Fund was born, with the Jesuits mining wealthy donors to pay for their missions, as well as the food to sustain them and the soldiers to protect them. In later years, royal support was sometimes received. But since the Jesuits had sole authority in California, they were viewed with suspicion by authorities in mainland Mexico and much of the money earmarked for them by royal directive was never delivered. 

Ugarte was charged with overseeing the Pious Fund during the critical period of 1697-1700, before coming to California himself in 1701. But the Pious Fund continued and had no better friend than José de la Puente y Peña, better known by his title as the Marqués de Villapuente. Of the four missions built by the Jesuits in the southernmost part of the peninsula — at La Paz (1720), Santiago (1724), San José del Cabo (1730) and Todos Santos (1733) — Villapuente funded three of them, and his sister-in-law, Doña Rosa de la Peña, funded the other, in Todos Santos. 

The math was simple. A mission could be endowed with 10,000 pesos. Villapuente, who had come to Mexico from Spain at the age of 15 and had become wealthy through the acquisition of massive landed estates and by making a good marriage to his cousin Doña Gertrudis de la Peña, would liberally endow eight of the 17 missions established on the Baja California peninsula during the Jesuit Era (1697-1768). The last, at Santa Gertrudis, was named for his wife and was established after his death in 1739 from a bequest left in his will.

The mission at San José del Cabo was named for him, although ostensibly for St. Joseph, around whose feast day the city’s fiestas tradicionales are now annually scheduled. According to the esteemed Los Cabos-born historian Pablo L. Martínez, for whom the state’s historical archive is now named, “The name of San José was given after José de la Puente, benefactor of colonization; and that of del Cabo was added to distinguish it from Comondú, which was also San José.”

The founding of a mission and the birth of San José del Cabo

The two Jesuit missions built within what is now Los Cabos were Santiago el Apóstol Aiñiní, founded in 1724 by Sicilian friar Ignacio María Nápoli, and San José del Cabo Añuití, founded six years later by Nicolás Tamaral, originally from Sevilla, Spain. 

These missions were not exactly prepossessing. As Franciscan friar Zephyrin Engelhardt wrote of the mission at San José del Cabo in his 1908 historical work, “The Missions and Missionaries of California: Vol. 1, Lower California”: “On a convenient site near a lagoon, two huts were constructed of palm leaves and roofed with reeds and dry grass; one was to serve as a chapel, the other as a dwelling for the missionary. This was the beginning of San José del Cabo.” 

Both missions would ultimately be relocated, but these were the first structures of note ever built in Los Cabos, and the mission at San José del Cabo was a particular achievement, since Spanish interests had been pushing for support for the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade in Southern Baja for well over a century. True, the Jesuit fathers were unlikely to help the galleons fight off the pirates who lay in wait in Cabo San Lucas Bay. But they could help provide fresh water and restorative fare to sailors suffering from scurvy or beri-beri after a long sea voyage. 

Indeed, that’s exactly what happened in 1734, when Tamaral and his neophytes helped nurse the crew of the annual galleon back to health by providing much-needed supplies. From this point on, San José del Cabo was not just a sometimes pit stop for galleon captains en route to Acapulco, but a mandatory one. 

The Indigenous inhabitants of Los Cabos

The Indigenous people at Santiago were called the Coras, and for hundreds of years, they were thought to be related to the Guaycura. However, recent scholarship has shown they were simply another tribe of Pericú, as the people who roamed over Los Cabos for 10,000 years or more were known. 

The Jesuit friars followed the usual procedure with the Pericú, attempting to learn their language to hasten the explanation of Christian concepts and eventual baptism. Pericúes in attendance would spend their days being read to aloud from the catechism by the missionary, with occasional interludes during which they would be fed pozole. However, from the beginning, the Pericú proved the most recalcitrant and difficult of all the Indigenous tribes with whom the Jesuits had attempted to convert. 

“We proceed very slowly with these poor savages because of their remarkable dullness to learn and to make themselves capable of grasping the sublime mysteries of our holy faith,” Tamaral shared in a letter to the Marqués de Villapuente in 1731. “This is owing to the awful vices in which, as pagan savages, they are steeped, to the superstitions to which they are attached, to the wars and to murders prevailing among them, but especially to the mire of impurity into which they are plunged. It is extremely difficult to persuade them to resolve to dismiss the great number of wives that each one has, for even the poorest and lowest have two or three and more wives, because among these Indians the feminine sex is more numerous.”

The Rebellion of the Pericúes

The rebellion, which would rock Jesuit California and last for nearly three years, was thus in some ways inevitable. The Pericú were steeped in polygamy, and the Jesuits were morally set against it. The instigators of the killings that would follow, however, were said not to have been full-blooded Pericú, but those of mixed parentage, likely due to encounters with pearlers or visiting pirates. The most notable firebrands were Botón in Santiago and Chicorí in San José del Cabo.

The Pericúes had threatened to kill the missionaries on several prior occasions (in 1723, 1725 and 1729), but the Jesuits had been reinforced by soldiers with guns, which the Indigenous inhabitants feared. However, by 1734, they were ready for another attempt. The difference was that there were only two sentries at Santiago and none at San José del Cabo. The protectors were gone, looking for cattle, when insurrectionists under Botón killed Cholula-born missionary Lorenzo Carranco, who had replaced Nápoli at Santiago, on Oct. 1, 1734. First, they shot him with arrows, then beat him with sticks and stones, before burning him along with his Indigenous altar boy and the rest of the mission.

Tamaral was next. He, too, was killed, shot with arrows before being beheaded with knives and having the mission he had built burned down around him.  After these initial successes, the Indigenous uprisers next went to the missions at Todos Santos and La Paz. However, the missionaries there — Sigismundo Taraval and William Gordon, respectively — were already gone, so the Pericú and Guaycura — traditionally bitter enemies, but in this case with a common cause — had to be content with burning down the missions.

The Pericú, with the help of the Guaycura, had destroyed all evidence of Jesuit mission building in the southernmost part of the Baja California peninsula and had thus regained their independence. The Jesuits, meanwhile, recalled all of their friars to Loreto in fear that the rebellion would be taken up by other Indigenous peoples throughout the peninsula. Fortunately for them, the Cochimí remained peaceful.

The Jesuits also pleaded for help from the mainland, but Viceroy Juan Antonio de Vizarrón y Eguiarreta was a political enemy. Thus, it was 18 more months before Sinaloan governor Manuel Bernal de Huidobro finally arrived to put down the rebellion. The only reason he came at all was an affront that could not be ignored: an attack on the Manila galleon. 

Eight Spaniards who had come ashore from the galleon in 1735 were killed and a force of 600 Pericúes under a leader named Gerónimo attempted to take the ship itself. But in this, they were repelled, although five more sailors were killed during subsequent fighting. This insult resulted in the establishment by Huidobro of a presidio in San José del Cabo — only the second on the peninsula, with the first at Loreto — although its use lasted less than two decades. The mission itself was reduced to visita status by 1748, a status which it retained until the Jesuits were expelled from California in 1768, and from all Spanish lands over a period of several years.

The end of the Jesuit Era

The Rebellion of the Pericúes was, in many ways, a presentiment of the expulsion of the Jesuits from the peninsula three decades later, in 1768. To put down the rebellion, the practical foundations of Jesuit governance had been compromised. Their hands forced by circumstance, they ceded some of their almost total control over the peninsula and its people to outsiders. They also opened themselves up to criticism from their political enemies, of which they had many, not just for their inability to protect themselves or strategic interests, but because they failed to protect their Indigenous charges. 

The Jesuits, despite their good intentions, had brought ruin to the peninsula’s Indigenous people. Before they arrived, there were an estimated 50,000 Indigenous peoples on the Baja California peninsula. By 1750, that number had withered to only 12,000. The Pericú were particularly devastated, not just by the casualties they suffered in the rebellion, but by disease. Smallpox and measles took a toll, but their population — 5,000 at its height — was also ravaged by the so-called “French Disease,” a virulent form of syphilis that was brought to the peninsula via the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade. By 1768, the year the Jesuits were forced to leave, the number of Pericúes was so low that they were bordering on extinction. 

Unfortunately for them, they would fare no better under the Franciscans, the missionary order that succeeded the Jesuits in California.

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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Why eating hot sauce honors Mexico’s gods

If you come to Mexico and skip the spicy salsa, you’re missing the point. In one of the most-read articles of 2025, Andrea explains how chile has been sacred since Mesoamerican times, why capsaicin tricks your brain into thinking your tongue is on fire, and how to handle that first incendiary bite. From molcajete-made sauces to Michelin-star tacos, it’s a playful invitation to taste Mexico’s true heat — one cautious drop at a time.

Why eating spicy salsa matters

Taste of Mexico: Jamaica

No, not the country, but Mexico’s agua fresca of choice, made from hibiscus flowers, chia seed, water and other ingredients. Writer María Meléndez traced the history of hibiscus and its domestication several thousand years into the past. No, it’s not native to Mexico. But from the moment it arrived at Acapulco, where it was brought via Manila galleon — part of a global trade route that connected Spain’s colonial powers from the 16th to 18th centuries — it was passionately welcomed into the country’s kitchens.

Taste of Mexico: Jamaica

How Mexico revolutionized world cuisine

Not only does Mexico have some of the world’s finest restaurants (just ask Michelin Guide), and a cuisine that has been declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, it also has some unique native ingredients that, through the centuries, have utterly transformed world cuisine. Did you know, for example, that there were no tomato sauces in Italian cuisine until the country sourced tomatoes from Mexico?

How Mexico revolutionized world cuisine

Mexico’s first-ever carbon-neutral coffee farm

Thirty years after vowing never to be a coffee farmer, Julia Ortega now runs Mexico’s first carbon-neutral coffee farm in Puebla’s misty highlands. This profile follows her from reluctant heir to innovative producer, turning “waste” into soap, flour and liqueur while exporting organic specialty beans worldwide. Meet the woman whose stubbornness, science-driven husband and broken machinery helped transform a small family plot into a model of sustainable agriculture.

Julia Ortega: The woman behind Mexico’s first carbon-neutral coffee farm

The seed that went into space

From ancient altars to outer space, amaranth has always punched above its tiny weight. This story traces Mexico’s beloved alegría bars back to an 8,000-year-old superseed packed with more protein than wheat or rice, natural omega fats, and a full suite of vitamins. Learn how this drought‑resistant, gluten-free pseudo-grain went from Puebla’s fields to NASA-approved astronaut food — and why it may be the future of sustainable nutrition.

From Mexico to the world: amaranth, the tiny seed that traveled to space

Tacos al Japonés

In Kyoto’s backstreets, Mexico News Daily’s María Ruíz stumbles on the last thing she expects: some of the best carnitas tacos she’s ever had, made by a Japanese chef named Keita. This charming tale follows his obsession born in Baja, years perfecting tortillas, and a tiny taquería where locals eat tacos with chopsticks. Come for the culture clash, stay for the unlikely friendship forged over salsa and hiragana.

Memoirs of a Kyoto Taquería: My Japanese carnitas adventure

Check out the rest of our amazing food coverage here!

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But there are a few places where it does snow, with the mountain range of San Pedro Mártir being the most likely to see snowflakes during the holiday season. During winter storms, the temperature can even drop below zero. Home to the highest peak on the peninsula, Picacho del Diablo, at over 10,000 feet in elevation, and an astronomical observatory at over 9,000 operated by Institute of Astronomy as the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), it’s not only possible that there’s a white Christmas in San Pedro Mártir, but that Santa’s sleigh is sighted by the observatory’s high-powered telescope in the skies above.

Indeed, since San Pedro Mártir is also the oldest national park in Baja California, and is home not only to bighorn sheep and California condors, but also mule deer, it’s also possible in the event of a reindeer emergency that Santa could source a somewhat appropriate replacement.

But let’s be clear. In Tijuana, the “Gateway to Mexico” and the most populous city on the 760-mile-long Baja California peninsula, no one waits for Santa Claus. The children there don’t look for sleighs, but for men on Harley-Davidsons.

Outlaw bikers deliver toys in Tijuana

The Solo Ángeles motorcycle club was founded in Tijuana in 1959 by a former member of the Hell’s Angels. But as a member of the club once noted as a distinction:  “Far from being ‘Hells Angels,’ they are ‘Only Angels.’”

That’s certainly true when it comes to giving away toys to disadvantaged children for Christmas. Since the mid-1980s, the Solo Angeles have organized an annual Tijuana Toy Run. This year marked the 40th anniversary of the event, with 5,000 toys delivered to kids after some members of the club, along with many motorcyclists from the U.S., caravaned to Avenida Revolución in the heart of downtown Tijuana. 

Some 2,000 motorcyclists were part of the caravan this year. Through the decades, the number of toys delivered has probably been in the hundreds of thousands, a testament to the long-running charitable commitment of the club as well as to other participating motorcyclists from Tijuana and Southern California. 

“We wish all the children of Tijuana the very best, and we will always be here participating and doing our part, as people should,” Jesús Moreno, the president of Solo Ángeles, told La Jornada.

The Baja California peninsula’s food angels

In addition to charitable organizations for gift giving, there are also many around the Baja California peninsula whose mission is to ensure everyone has enough to eat, and not just for the holidays either. This is a year-round commitment.

Each organization has its own story. For Feeding Los Cabos Kids (FLCK), it began with a single traveler. When Donna Brnjic visited Los Cabos in 2004, she immediately noticed that beyond the touristy areas of the destination, many children seemed to be hungry. Her solution was to take $100 and buy as much food as she could, which she then handed out.

Fast forward two decades, and FLCK is a non-profit ministered by Cabo Church, with 14 community kitchens serving some 20,000 meals monthly. The overhead of such an endeavor has become enormous — it costs US $24,000 per year to fund one kitchen — but thanks to generous donations (yes, donating is tax-deductible) and the work of volunteers, FLCK continues with its good work. 

The same could be said for Alianza para la Seguridad Alimentaria (The Alliance for Food Security), headquartered in La Paz, although it operates on an even larger scale: feeding 80,000 people per month through its network of 90 independent community kitchens. This non-profit organization was founded in 2013 to address food insecurity in Baja California Sur. It does so, in part, through its Banco de Alimentos Sudcaliforniano, which utilizes food banks to distribute food to community kitchens located in poorer areas of the state.

In addition to donations, much of the food is recovered from hotels, supermarkets and restaurants. It’s food that is still good, but would be wasted were it not donated. 

Seasonal blessings at peninsular churches

As in the rest of overwhelmingly Catholic Mexico, the holidays are a busy time at regional churches, from El Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe on Dec. 12 to El Día de Reyes on Jan. 6. The Baja California peninsula also offers some beautiful and historic churches to accompany the spiritual grace, from Tijuana’s Santuario de la Virgen de Guadalupe in the north, with its origins in the late 19th century, to Parroquia Misión de San José del Cabo in the south, which is related only in spirit to the city’s historical mission, but pays tribute with a tiled mosaic portraying the martyrdom of Jesuit missionary Nicolás Tamaral in 1734. 

It should be noted, however, that the peninsula is welcoming to visitors of all religious persuasions — with the houses of worship to prove it — and to those with none at all. Churches representing many Protestant denominations may be found, for example, as can Jewish synagogues, Muslim mosques and even Buddhist temples. 

Which is to say, there are no prerequisites for visitors, other than an open mind, an open heart and an appreciation for the spirit of the season.

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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Academic studies of how these tourist destinations developed over time followed, perhaps the most influential and enduring of these being Professor Richard W. Butler’s concept of a Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC), first published in The Canadian Geographer in 1980. 

Butler’s model for how tourism destinations evolve posited six stages, the first five of which are exploration, involvement, development, consolidation and stagnation. The final stage offers several possibilities, ranging from rejuvenation to decline or even outright collapse of tourism due to external factors (the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 provided a thankfully brief example of how this might happen). 

Of course, no two tourist destinations are the same. Nor is there any timeline for how long each of these stages might take. But given the lasting impact of Butler’s theory and the rapid growth in Los Cabos in recent decades, it seemed interesting to explore where Los Cabos is in its evolution, according to Butler’s model, and thus what the future might hold. 

Exploration

The first stage occurs when a small number of tourists discover a place, likely because of a single exceptional attraction. In the case of Los Cabos, it was fishing. The reputation for the spectacular fishing throughout the Baja California peninsula began to be spread by Western Outdoor News writer Ray Cannon to U.S. audiences in the 1950s.

The first two lodgings in Los Cabos in response to this exploratory phase were the Fisher House, a guesthouse rather than a hotel, which was opened by Carmen Fisher in San José del Cabo in 1951; and the Hotel Las Cruces Palmilla, which opened in 1956 with but 15 rooms. Intrepid travelers of the time were few and obliged to fly down and land on Palmilla’s airstrip, or come by boat, since there were few roads and no commercial air service nearer than La Paz.

Butler noted that there is little economic benefit for locals in this stage, and with few exceptions, that was the case in Los Cabos.

Involvement

By the time Los Cabos was featured in a Sports Illustrated article in 1965, Los Cabos had been placed on the tourism map, not only for its fishing, but also for some notable new hotels: the Hotel Cabo San Lucas in 1961 and the Hotel Hacienda in 1963, the latter the first lodging to open in Cabo San Lucas. 

By then, locals had become more involved in tourism, as Butler predicted would happen in the TALC’s involvement stage, and a defined tourist season was being established. There was also more pressure to improve transportation options to the destination, although these wouldn’t come to fruition until the following decade, when the Transpeninsular Highway was completed — allowing people from the U.S. to drive the length of the peninsula for the first time — and the Los Cabos International Airport opened. 

Development

According to Butler, tourists arrive slowly at first before eventually there is a rapid rate of growth. For Los Cabos, this happened only within the past 15 years, as the graph above suggests, with two brief dips due to Hurricane Odile in 2014 and the pandemic in 2020.

However, there was a long run-up to this phase, and it seems clear that Los Cabos first entered the development stage, as Butler defines it, in the early 1990s. That’s when local control of tourism declined as large brands began moving in, beginning with the opening of Westin and Hilton properties in 1993 and 2002, respectively, with more hospitality chains following in their wake. This period also saw the development of attractions beyond fishing and beaches, with luxury resorts featuring spas, upgraded swimming pools and significantly improved dining options increasingly becoming the norm. 

This is also the first stage where locals began to see changes to the area that they didn’t approve of, which was true as early as the 1990s.

Consolidation

“As the consolidation stage is entered, the rate of increase in numbers of visitors will decline,” Butler pointed out, “although total numbers will still increase, and total visitor numbers exceed the number of permanent residents. A major part of the area’s economy will be tied to tourism. Marketing and advertising will be wide-reaching and efforts made to extend the visitor season and market area.”

Los Cabos has likely entered this stage now that growth has slowed significantly. This year, per Rodrigo Esponda, managing director of the Los Cabos Tourism Board (FITURCA), tourism growth should finish at about 2.5%, with 3% forecast for next year. Which is to say, quality is now prized above quantity. 

These figures argue for placing Los Cabos in the consolidation stage, even though other Butler hallmarks for it — well-defined tourism districts, widespread marketing and advertising — were seen during what I have described as Los Cabos’ development stage. A growth in opposition to tourist projects, another Butler staple of consolidation, is also present.

Stagnation

“One aspect of the model that has become more relevant over time,” Butler has written since his theory was first published, “is the relationship implied between level of use and quality of experience.” Meaning that the more people that come to a destination, the more likely they are to degrade the quality of the natural attractions that spurred tourism in the first place. 

This is undoubtedly happening in Los Cabos. Fish populations, for example, have been declining regionally for decades, and scarcely any views of the ocean can be seen along what is now termed La Ruta Escénica, which, 20 years ago and before, was truly spectacular. It’s also clear that developments are reaching farther up the Pacific Coast and East Cape, encroaching on natural treasures like the Cabo Pulmo National Park. 

It’s likewise true, as Butler foretold, that Los Cabos is starting to lose its fashionable image. But until other trendier destinations arise and Los Cabos actually reaches its peak in terms of tourism numbers — unlikely any time soon, given infrastructure improvements to the Los Cabos International Airport and elsewhere — Los Cabos will continue to fight off stagnation. It bears noting, for instance, that area resorts collectively have never been of a higher quality than they are right now.

The final stage

The final stage, according to Butler, offers five potential outcomes. Two of them, modest growth or complete rejuvenation, suggest a rosy future. The other three — decline, capacity levels cut to stabilize decline, and the total collapse of tourism in the destination due to war, pandemic or other external factors — represent varying degrees of calamity.

Assuming Los Cabos solves its water problems — a big if considering the municipality has been operating at a deficit for quite some time — then I would consider continued moderate growth the likeliest outcome, especially if the Los Cabos Tourism Board continues to be so efficiently managed, and with such foresight. But the future, as always, remains beyond the conception of any model, however well thought out.

Chris Sands is the former Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best and writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook. He’s also a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.

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