Los Cabos Mexico
Picture this: you get a timeshare deal on your email with the words: 5 day 4 nights at the Westin Los Cabos for only $399. Would you go for this deal or would you think it’s too good to be true?
We jumped at the chance, because why not? It was a good deal for a city that’s known for vacationing celebrities and multi-million dollar homes.
If you want to skip the long blog, here’s a summary of what we did on our 4 days in Los Cabos.
Contents
Day 1: Arrive late at hotel after a few hours of flying (and stopovers). Check in and sleep.
Day 2: Meet concierge, schedule timeshare presentation, walk around the beach, hang out in the pool, schedule tours. Pretty much relax and laze around.
Day 3: Early whale ? watching tour (and was it a good tour), walk around Los Cabos (the town/city), buy souvenirs to bring home. Back to hotel.
Day 4: Timeshare presentation, watch movie on TV, chill, pool, and beach, dinner sailing tour
Day 5: Go home early. Fly to the other side of the country. Home.
We flew using American Airlines from the East Coast.
Total flight costs: 40,000 AA miles for two + $200+ taxes and fees
Almost all major American airlines fly to Cabos and they do go on sale every now and again. For your reference, the airport code is SJD (San Jose del Cabos).
If you are a travel hacker, you can use miles for the round-trip flight to Cabos to lower your costs, especially if you’re coming from the East Coast. From the West Coast, you may have more options for airlines to get to Los Cabos.
First off, let us define the two towns that can be used interchangeably when you talk about Cabos.
San Jose del Cabos is where the airport is located. This is a quieter place to stay, as compared to its sister city, Los Cabos.
Los Cabos is the crazier downtown area. Bars, clubs, you know, drunken, college-kids type folk or those who just like to go and have fun. They also have overpriced shopping malls and restaurants in this area, some of them chain restaurants that are also available in the US. Los Cabos is also the area where most of your water tours will start: be it a whale watching tour, a sailboat tour, or whatnot, because the marina is located here.
Most of the bigger hotels are located on the strip between Los Cabos and San Jose del Cabos, its just a matter which city/town your hotel is closer to. You won’t even get lost, there’s pretty much only one main highway from Los Cabos to San Jose del Cabos.
The Westin resort is closer to San Jose del Cabos. It is a beautiful building where everything is open, . This is mostly a timeshare, but you can use Starwood/Marriott points to redeem a free night in the hotel. They also rent hotel rooms per night, with the hopes of you agreeing to a deal where you will sit down for a presentation in exchange for a cheaper stay.
Our room was great; we had a studio oceanfront room where the bed was facing the ocean. Awesome! Not as great as the Westin Lagunamar, though.
There is a working kitchen, with a fridge, a microwave, dishwasher and a stove! The stove was the best deal – you can bring some pasta or buy from the store and self-cater.
Having the option to cook means you may not have to pay for food in the resort. While there are restaurant options, the prices are a bit expensive.
If you go during whale watching season, you can see some whales from your balcony. No joke! You will see them surface and blow water out of their blowholes, and if you’re lucky see them –breach–
$399 for 5 days, 4 nights, with a $75 voucher which you can use in the hotel or 5000 Starpoints.
$100 resort certificates for attending the presentation (we didn’t get any Starpoint option), which is mostly used for food/drink/groceries from their restaurants and store.
We managed to convince them to use our vouchers to book a tour instead (and they agreed).
If you attended the timeshare presentation, you will get a discount and other incentives on activities. In our case, it was a 40% discount or buy 2 tours, get a third free.
Unfortunately, we only got to book 1 tour with the hotel because we booked our whale watching tour from a separate company. We didn’t really know what to expect. Now we know!
Our whale watching experience was great: the whale group we were watching were a curious little bunch. They kept swimming up to the boat or in the bottom of it. One was even spy hopping where it would bob up to look at the boat (and us tiny creatures) and then float upright.
They were so close, we saw their hair follicles, and one even went all Shamu on us and used her tail to spash the boat! Super cute and great experience overall!
We booked our tours through Whale Watch Cabo which gave us a 15% discount by paying cash.
They used a bigger boat instead of a zodiac, but the up close experiences are the same.
Note that whale watching season starts from January and ends around April.
We didn’t have time for a lot of tours so we quickly booked this excursion because it was the only one that worked with our schedule.
They try to make you really drunk (cos it is an open bar), and they do include a bento box of food as dinner.
Our guide was great, he is very engaging, and is pointing out sites to us. However, there was a part in the tour where we got a little bit queasy. If you get seasick easily, drink your motion sickness pills at least an hour before leaving (good advise for the whale watching tour above too).
The boat really slows down at one point of the tour and you are just left in the open water while the waves splash around.
Thank goodness we didn’t hurl as the boat picked up at one point and we felt the wind back on our faces again. Oh and I also distracted myself by singing 90s boyband songs but that’s another story.
The beach is interesting. In Florida (and the Philippines), we got spoiled with white sand beaches as pure as powder as you look out through the azure/blue water of the ocean/see.
In Cabos, the beach is very rocky. Not a great time to forget your swim shoes, but you can make do by walking around in your flip flops.
The rocky outcrops are good for photo shoots (albeit amateur), and it also provided a certain level of seclusion as it gives a natural barrier between the resorts (which could be a good thing or a bad thing).
I would not recommend swimming in the waters, as the currents are very strong. You don’t want to be swept by a wave as it crashes through a huge rock/boulder, right?
If you are not party people (and trust me, Peter and I are not– I have graduated from it and feel old), Los Cabos can still be a destination for you.
As we shared in our itinerary above, you can have a few days off relaxation coupled with a few activities to top off a 5 day trip to Los Cabos.
Pick your accommodation wisely, plan your activities, and most of all, have fun on your trip!
Any other tips on what to do in Los Cabos or San Jose Del Cabos that we may have missed? Feel free to share in the comments below.
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