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Saturday, December 31, 2011

Travlog: Part 4: San Jose del Cabo

San Jose is about 15 miles northeastward along the southern end of the Baja from Cabo San Lucas, which envelops the southern tip of the peninsula. It's a much more "Mexican" town than CSL, although it's plenty gringo-ized. Just about everyone who runs a shop or a restaurant speaks English pretty well, and we saw lots of North Americans.

Near our hotel there was a concentration of fine-art shops, which featured a wide variety of excellent paintings, exquisite (and reasonably-priced) locally made jewelry, and the best selection of Mexican pottery from all over the country that I've seen. I don't generally photograph in the shops, because it implies I'm stealing ideas, but you can see Mexican pottery in a variety of sites on the internet if you look. I do recommend you take a look at Paquime and Mata Ortiz pottery.

Here's where we stayed, the Tropicana Hotel.








The San Jose beach is about 3/4 mile south of the Tropicana. You don't swim on the Pacific side of the Cabo (Cabo means "end"); undertows and violent surf. There is some surfing along the Cabo, but it's not recommended for beginners.

View from the beach.


This guy circled the beach for a while, landed and took off.

Yes, you can still get one of these things.

4 comments:

geographer said...

Nice post. Thanks. Psst, everyone north of the Panama Canal is a "North American", but we know what you meant.

Bob Newland said...

Mexicans often refer to people from the USA and Canada as "Norteamericanos," although geographer is correct, technically.

The USA is "El Norte," or "Los Yunaites."

Wayne Gilbert said...

I'd like to get half a leg waxed but I'm not sure which half.

Bob Newland said...

That dilemma troubled me at the time, as well.