IS IT CABO OR IS IT YOU?
BY CASEY

Once upon a time there was a magical little spot way out on the far end of the Baja peninsula called Cabo San Lucas. A small bay, protected by gaudily beautiful rocks from the heavy swell of the open Pacific Ocean on one side, and from the hard steep chop that dominoes south down the length of the Gulf of California on the other. Native seafaring Indians, pirates, and explorers visited. It wan't near anything. Baja was the most obscure place in Mexico, and CSL was on the far, far remote end of It. The government of Mexico finally began bribing people after WW2 to live there. 'Move to Baja, and we'll give you a boat, and a net and some hooks.' Later they threw in a free outboard motor. It took 400 years of western visitation to finally realize two things. Cabo San Lucas possessed: 1) one of the most scenically beautiful spots on the planet, and 2) one of the greatest game fishing grounds on the planet.

CSL grew. It changed. It grew some more. It kept changing and growing and at an ever faster pace. It stayed jaw dropping beautiful, and the fishing stayed beautiful too. It was no longer just a bay for Spanish galleons to stop for fresh water. American fishing boats and sailing yachts came at first. They came and they returned and they told their friends. There wasn't a paved road anywhere even close, let alone an airport. You had to get there by boat or burro. Word was out though, and the roads came and the airport came and even the hermit crab rental cells of the non-traveling traveler, the cruise ship, came.

It turned out that the beautiful harbor had some flaws. The Bahia was well protected from North winds and waves, but wide open to the South. The center of the bay was too deep for reliable anchoring, and the good anchoring was right off the beach in sand that sometimes shifted and shrank. A big storm surged in one year and destroyed the fleet and the small marina. Sailors began to gush about the glory of the bay just around the corner in La Paz instead.

Cabo San Lucas green-lighted development. The marina was rebuilt, enlarged and better protected. The marina and the beaches became lined with hotels and time shares that formed a wall between the sea and the Mexican town.

When I came to Cabo by boat 19 years ago, I spent time in the anchorage, in the marina, and back out in the anchorage. It was crazy, chaotic, hectic, exciting, annoying, frustrating, and fun.* Steak and lobster and beer and tequila were all available for cheap. Many of the boats anchored appeared to be some version of abandoned and some of the boats at the docks did too. Jet skis were like locusts. I clearly remember a bored looking jet skier circling my boat, and my boat only. Around and around he went, with a look of both boredom and fear stamped on his sun burnt face. This was at the height of the jet ski pestilence, and the unfamiliar-with-the-ocean sunbathers were afraid to scoot out to open water, yet staying by the beach gave them nothing to do, but make little wave churning circles, over and over, with their eyes glazed in boredom, yet still not wanting to take back the sea-do while they still had time on the clock. I often watched them from my cockpit thinking they were probably happier back at home at their work stations. Back on land there were still some dirt roads not far from the water where Mexican families dressed up and walked together to church on Sunday morning.

I met many boaters who told me in grimly confidential terms, 'Cabo is ruined.' Some had been there 3 years before, when it was great. Others had been there 10 years before, when it was great. I could see their point with the heinous jet ski hordes and the endless sidewalk time share touts, but come on, I thought, look up! Look around! I finally met an older woman whom had been coming to CSL since 1962, with her husband, on their power boat. Apologetically I told her, “Everyone keeps telling me that Cabo San Lucas is ruined, but I like it.' She smiled and said that when she first began coming to the bay, it was a tiny fishing village with dirt roads and few services. She came to know the fishermen and their wives. Still, she loved the place even now, and continued to return. She said that people came and fell in love with the place, and then when they came back it had changed, and they resented that. Hadn't the places they came from changed as well? Were all of those places ruined too?

A few years after we were back from the first sailing trip, we flew to Cabo for a vacation. It had grown. It had changed. Hotels and Condo's lined beaches in both directions that had previously only been rough hewn rock and desert. Getting places often seemed to need a taxi. It all felt, to be honest, a little bit ruined.

So now all these years later, there was almost a bit of dread about reaching CSL. When you come south from the Pacific NorthWest, you look to reach the smooth seas of Southern California, and from there you look south to Cabo San Lucas and the chance to put a protective wall between you and the open ocean. It would mark the end of about two thousand miles of open ocean, but the ocean had been kind to us, and beautiful and peaceful. I did not want to come from that, to tie up to a thundering disco and a high end boutique. I remembered that the little road with the cute Catholic children walking to Mass holding their parent's hands, had, on my last visit, literally contained more than one frat boy rolling semiconscious in puddles of vomit. Buzzed tourists said Cabo Wabo like it was a sentence. That we would be sailing to this place right after Magdalena Bay, a place the size of San Francisco Bay and still one of the great undeveloped wonders of the natural world, would make the arrival all the more jarring. The friendly dirt road fishing town of Man of War Cove, must have been amazingly like the Cabo of 50 years ago.

In Ensenada, a town we found much grown and changed for the better, I talked to a couple who had sailed the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez for many years. He told me that 3 years previously they had pulled into Cabo, where they were trying to shoe horn in 3 cruise ships. They dropped their anchor and shut down the motor. Jet skiers swarmed like no-see-ums. Music and loud speakers boomed from the beach. He and his wife exchanged glances, then started the motor, raised the anchor, and left. I didn't hear a cruiser say a kind word about Cabo San Lucas that I can recall.

So. So, that was in my head as we finally rounded the still spectacular Los Arcos rock formation and found the Bahia de San Lucas. The town was now a city of 180,000 and still growing. The marina was even bigger, but the newer nearby marina at San Jose del Cabo had taken away much of the boat overcrowding. No more derelict or drifting boats. We anchored in 12 feet of water off a dazzling white beach in the company of only four other boats. There were a few jet skiers, but it's coolness cache has been so diminished (I imagine shipping containers full of them steaming to Azerbaijan for a second life of hipness) and been replaced by the silent and athletic vogue of stand up paddle boarding.

Dawn Treader floated just off the beach, but had a good hook in the sand, so we could relax and have a cocktail at making the first left turn since Neah Bay. The first day we stayed aboard, eating, drinking and ogling the view. The row of beach hotels and bars were attractive enough, and the beaches themselves nearly empty. There was no sign of High Season or any upcoming Xmas rush. Houses and blocks of flats rolled way up into the surrounding hills now, but the bay itself would still have been recognized by a thirsty galleon Captain bringing his treasure in silver back from Manilla, just as it was by me. There was nothing between us and the open Pacific except that exquisite series of rocks, spires, and arches interspersed with slivers of golden sand. As the days went by, we would look up from whatever we were saying or doing, and catch ourselves surprised to be bobbing in the middle of a tropical post card. Bad press amongst sailors may have helped to give us Cabo San Lucas pretty much to ourselves.

We went ashore the next day and tied up to the dinghy dock which was still right where we had left it. The marina was much grown, but still small, really, compared to most marinas. Once past the wall of hotels with shops at their feet for the 1%-ers, or wanna pretend to be's - Swiss watches, leather bags, and jewelry [which makes me wonder because the shops are pretty much the same as at dolled up airports, is the thinking 'put this stuff where rich folks are known to go', or do people with tax shelters really snap their manicured and uncallused fingers and exclaim in toffee mouthed tones, “I say Bardsworth, how's about we go to that place where they keep all the boats and buy ourselves a couple twenty thousand dollar watches, eh?”] and we emerged on to a busy street that would have fit in on most any other Mexican city on the sea, except for you couldn't see the sea. Two blocks further and you were in Mexico proper, with working people shoe stores and pharmacies and hardware stores. The restaurants and shops had as good prices as Ensenada, or as we would later find in La Paz. A restaurant with two full tables was busy. I would guess the Great Recession had made its mark here, as much as anywhere. All the big supermarkets were a bus ride away, but there were plenty of cheap buses. We discovered Tacos el Pastor (pork cooked on those large wheels of sizzling meat you usually see in Greek or Turkish places) and their Torta version, and kept shopping to a minimum.

In short, we loved our stay there. Sure there were some jet skiers. For those who don't know, a jet ski is small, but produces a lot of noise, and worse, a wake the size of a cabin cruiser. Imagine an Alaskan crab boat circling your boat at full speed while the drunken sun stunned and totally untrained helmsman attempts to snap a selfie. One jet skier can easily get an entire anchorage rolling. Mostly though, there were just the strings of jet skies trained out each morning and then strung up and dragged back each evening with few takers. Plenty of water taxis plied the bay looking for pick ups off the beach, but they also served the anchored boats and at a better rate than they offered the hotel folk. There were booze cruise boats in the evening, but the sight of girls in bikini's dancing to rock and roll wasn't all that deeply troubling, I am a live and let live kind of guy after all...

What lights up the cerebral pleasure centers for a cruiser are not what may do it for the time share or one week hotel crowd. A non-lethal dinghy landing area, laundry options of any sort, and a great street cart for the treat of a meal ashore vs. a swim up pool bar, a chromed up American style hotel restaurant, and a tanning beach (seriously, tanning?) with those cocktail waiters made to walk out on the sand in their shoes and jackets with blue colored beverages ('Pedro I clearly hablared that I wanted my Blue Hawaiian Curacao avec pamplemouse, does this look pamplemouse anything to you?!' I'm not knocking a fly-in vacation, if it wasn't for those there would be a whole lot more Russian Roulette played in Washington State than there is now. It's just a different protocol and not easy for every place to excel at serving both at the the same time. Some people do fly to exotic locales and cook their own meals, and some yachtistas drop the key off to the paid help to do their boat work (and maybe their shopping), for them, while they taxi from glitzy spot to glitzy spot. I have more in common with the first group than the second. I am of the opinion that if you fly to somewhere and stay at a Hilton hotel and then fly somewhere else and stay at that Hilton and then fly home, the only traveling you did was in the various cabs to and from the various airports. This to me misses all the glowing cerebral pleasure centers that travel can offer.


I find something interesting, and it is something that involves changes in Mexico and also changes in cruisers. Twenty years ago and long before, we sailed to places and anchored out and we went ashore by dinghy and we had pot lucks on beaches. We stopped at Cabo because we could anchor there. And at La Paz and in Mazatlan. That meant, and still means, that sometimes it is a while between proper showers and 10 minutes after that shower you may take a blast of salt water in the face in your dinghy. It gave you something to grouse about over drinks with your friends. Now there are so many more marinas in Mexico, that sailors go from one to the next like those people connecting the dots at Hilton Hotels. Marinas used to be places you went to while you fixed something major. Now folks who have spent years or even decades working and saving to go off on a sailing adventure spend almost all their times in marinas, that are pretty much like the ones back home, and complain that it's okay but not like they dreamed it would be. When has cruising in sailboat ever been okay? It's great, it's good, it's crummy, but not okay. You are too alive doing it for it to just be okay. Mind you, these are some of the most interesting and likable people you could have the good fortune to ever meet. It saddens me to think that some of them will stop cruising before I get to spend more time with them. I can only think to say, and I understand this because I can get trapped in a marina's safe ok-ness just like anyone else, 'When you were back home dreaming of this voyage, did you dream of marinas?'

Moving the discussion of the tension of a place's ability to cater to different crowds with different desires to a locale, say Florida, since I haven't been there and thus can't be wrong without an easy excuse. If I have saved all year for a 6 day/5 night getaway from a year of bad weather drudgery and want all the food, drink, sun and extracurricular activity I can find, then maybe Miami Beach is the place for me. If I need a place to anchor the boat for a month while I refill the water tanks with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, maybe I should go instead to Key West. A lot of people seem to love both those places, but if you switched them, I'm guessing the folks on each end would be pissed. The question is, can Cabo San Lucas be both kinds of place?

Cabo was once happy to have cruising boats show up. Heck, it was happy to get company of any kind way out there. But CSL realized the potential that massive development had to bring in huge amounts of revenue that would in turn create jobs, pay taxes, and create opportunity for Mexican citizens and for business where it had not been before. Cabo outgrew the yearly flotilla of sailors. I would be surprised if many Mexicans disapproved of the rise of modern CSL and the loss of a small struggling fishing town. There are plenty of those left for sailors to visit they might accurately point out. 'But senor, you will have to anchor the barca!' I remember at a work conference once, a manager from Wyoming telling me about Jackson Hole being a spot previously just visited by Yellowstone tourists and with a history of miners and cowboys, now becoming a place where the millionaires where getting booted away, because the Billionaires wanted to have more room available for when they just felt like stretching out. I remembered Carmel in Central California. Carmel was located on a small beach with beautiful rocks on each side. Stunningly beautiful. The town had once had something of a bohemian artistic community and it billed itself as being that still. Real artistic communities happen by chance and cheap rent. They don't bill themselves as anything. There was a park in the center of town that banned children playing. Carmel was like one of those beautiful dead butterflies that are lightly varnished and pinned in a display case. The very rich own the houses, the restaurants sell 70 dollar steaks, and you can get a huge oil painting done of yourself and your pampered dog. It is still pretty, but completely dead. Meanwhile, Monterey, over the hill, still rips along century after century alive and well. In that regard, Monterey is like La Paz in that they are, and were, working cities on the water, with their own long histories that welcome visitors by land and sea, while going on about their daily lives. Unlike Cabo San Lucas, it has been a very long time since either of them were fishing camps on a beach. In the Post-modern age, you don't inflate a small village a little. It either continues to expand or it pops and leaks. See Las Vegas. See Cabo San Lucas. I say see it, we had a great time. Of course you better hurry before it changes.


*This described Cabo and cruising on a sailboat. I remember being there tired and discouraged after countless broken and non functional items needed replacement, repair, or to be lived with out. I remember spending a day looking for an auto parts store that had a Ford pickup regulator that finally got my expensive Balmar alternator working. That night, a bunch of guys sat on the dock drinking beer and watching Monday Night Football on a little TV that had been drug out on an extension cord with a coat hanger antenna. Several of the other skippers had parts taken off their boats with them they were taking apart or putting them together as we watched the game. A light came on in my head, that the problem solving and the camaraderie were linked. While ready to complain, I had actually enjoyed fixing the battery charging problem and the days ahead took on a whole new light. I've told this story many times to would be cruisers, because it was then when it really struck me that wanting things to be easy made no sense of the decision to leave home on sailboat.