Cabo in Summer Means Bargains, Best Fishing

Cabo San Lucas in summer? Isn’t that like spending Christmas on Baffin Island?

True, temperatures can get a little warm. And there’s always the threat of a summer hurricane or three. But the best fishing and diving of the year coupled with rock-bottom prices make low season Cabo San Lucas one of the best travel bargains under the sun.

Currently, as little as $199 buys round-trip air fare on Aero California and Alaska Airlines with lodging at one of several participating Cabo San Lucas hotels for three nights. That’s just enough time to sample what’s made this resort at the southern terminus of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula famous: great beaches, water sports and . . . cheap margaritas.

Restrictions aside (two weeks’ advance booking, mid-week flights), travel has rarely been simpler. The hot days, warm nights and a short stay simplify packing. A swimsuit, toiletries and two changes of clothes all fit--theoretically--into one overnight bag, and you’re on your way.

Baja’s southern cape comes to view a mere 90 minutes out of LAX, about the same time it takes to drive to Palm Springs, that other hellaciously hot spot. Rippling flanks of the Sierra de la Victoria Mountains grade into tawny plains that meet the sea.

The granite peaks of Land’s End, Baja’s dramatic and much-photographed tip, glow with their own peculiar light, like a beacon at the end of this 800-mile land mass that divides deep Pacific from warm Golfo de California waters.

It’s a 20-minute cab ride from the airport near San Jose del Cabo into Cabo San Lucas. Brace yourself if you haven’t been here in a while.

Seemingly overnight the population of Cabo San Lucas has jumped to 14,000. Its lone paved road of three years ago is now one of many. Dusty streets have been lined with brick and a skyline has begun to emerge. The 280-room Plaza Las Glorias--a sprawling hotel/condominium/commercial complex--blocks the view of a marina which didn’t exist in 1987.

Cabo citizens use various cliches to describe their town’s recent growth: nuclear fission, snowballs, rabbits . . . seemingly anything that grows exponentially.

One example: The 18-month-old Melia Hotel is now the “old” Melia, rendered such by a sister operation that sprang into operation six months ago. When fully occupied, the new Melia--a 350-room complex designed after (and about the size of) a small South Seas village--could petition for representation in Tahitian parliament.

A gold rush atmosphere permeates once soporific Cabo. Real estate gossip has become every bit as intrinsic to life as the remarkable fishing that made the resort famous. Latest home prices in the up-scale “Pedregal” neighborhood are the only barroom topics that keep pace with fishing lies.

But if you’re out to create some fishing legends of your own, prepare for potent midday sun.

“It’s Palm Springs with an ocean,” says Darrell Primrose, owner of the Finnestera-Tortuga sports fishing fleet, speaking for what might be much of Baja. Beyond their propensity to make mercury boil--summer temperatures at Cabo regularly reach the 100s--the two resorts share little in common. No one goes to Palm Springs to fish, and no one brings golf shoes to Cabo.

Big game fisherman have always waited for Baja’s summer sun with the anticipation of Aleuts counting down the days till sunrise. By most accounts, Cabo is the center of the striped and blue marlin universe.

Though Australia’s Lizard Island is expected to remain the home of the world’s record marlin (1,500 pounds-plus) no place on earth rivals Cabo for sheer abundance of giant billfish. Whether the quarry is marlin or sailfish, summer is the best time to catch them.

“June water-temperatures hereabouts are 82 degrees,” says Primrose, “and fishing is good. In August and September it hits 90 and the fishing is great.” A photo on his wall of John Conant from North Hollywood with a 1,056-pound blue marlin--stamped Sept. 8--emphasizes his point.

Fishing, celebrities and Cabo’s history are inextricably bound. A commercial processing plant was operating in 1940 when John Steinbeck came through working on “Journal From the Sea of Cortez.”

Hotels were established after World War II when naval and air force officerfs returned to pursue the giant billfish they’d seen while on active duty. Fame and a list of Hollywood luminaries followed. The photo album of Rogelio Covarrubias, who has spent decades photographing trophy fish on Cabo’s docks, brims with shots of Mary Hemingway, Bing Crosby, John Wayne and others.

That heritage is threatened by commercial fishing operations. Chief culprits, contend the sportsfishermen, are giant foreign-registered vessels who ply Mexican waters. Local businessmen have banded together to preserve the sport.

Luis Bulnes, who owns the Solmar hotel has led a political battle to ban foreign registered “long-liners” from fishing in Mexican territorial waters. The local Sports Fishing Assn. adopted a kill limit of two fish per boat, then reduced it to one.

Employees of Marco Ehrenberg’s Pisces Fleet wear T-shirts with “fish ‘em and release ‘em” logos. Clients who comply with that program receive certificates that local merchants sometimes honor with free services. Chubasco’s grants all bearers of released-fish certificates one free hour of motorized scooter or 4x4 rental.

But not everyone who comes to Cabo fishes to relax. Charles and JoAnn Compton of Phoenix were unwinding by the Solmar pool, the closest in all of Cabo to the famous arch and the andesite pillars which constitute Land’s End.

Bags packed and ready to depart they admired the view for the last time. Veteran travelers on their first package tour, Charles reported having found exactly what they’d come for: “peace and quiet.”

And while JoAnn wished that the surf were gentler for swimming on some of the beaches, she said the view was adequate compensation.

“Oh, my,” said Charles, gesturing at the booming surf, vacant beach and cliffs made familiar by the swimsuit issues of Sports Illustrated.

“I’d warn people about the margaritas, though,” said Charles. Added JoAnne: “In Phoenix, they’re a mild, thirst-quenching drink, and here. . . .”

“Oh, my,” said Charles.

Those storied margaritas are on sale all afternoon and virtually everywhere in town--two for the price of one at Senor Sushi’s, three for one at The Rio Grill and an indeterminate number stuffed in jumbo glasses at The Giggling Marlin. Patrons of the latter bar take turns being hosited aloft on block and tackle while friends and family photograph them dangling by their feet, apparent trophies of a grinning fish.

The scenery the Comptons were admiring extends below the water. San Lucas Canyon, an abyssal trench, brings deep sea depths within rock skipping distance of shore, good news for scuba divers. So are summertime water conditions.

High temperatures eliminate the need for bulky wetsuits on shallow-water dives, deep-water visitors to the canyon enjoy the greatest visibility of the year--80 feet, versus 25 feet in winter, according to Ricardo Sevilla of Amigos Del Mar, a local dive shop.

Occasionally, clarity is such that “sandfalls” (just what they sound like: slow-motion cascades of beach sand pouring off the underwater canyon’s rim) 90 feet down are visible from the surface. Amigos offers Professional Association of Diving Instructors certification designed to get you down for a close-up view after four six-hour days of instruction. The all-inclusive price is $350.

For considerably less, a ride in a glass-bottom boat won’t guarantee you a sandfall sighting but will get you within picture-taking range of the Map of Baja Rock and the Cabo San Lucas Arch.

For $15, the Pez Vela, a 42-foot catamaran, sails twice daily on a somewhat longer course. The summer crowd is small enough to move around among and they grow from friendly to downright cordial under the influence of the setting sun, those brilliant peaks, and an open bar. The hardcore are back again in the morning for a visit to remote Lover’s Beach and a swim.

Lover’s Beach is the place from where you could skip a stone into the underwater canyon. The beach is protected from direct swells, but the steep drop-off means that even small waves create an alarming undertow.

After floundering in it for a while, I was reminded of my own mortality and left the water feeling like a clumsy and vulnerable refugee from the food chain.

But in Cabo you can’t avoid the food chain by staying out of the water. Timeshare salespeople lurk on the shore (where allowed, the Solmar--my kind of hotel--bans them from the premises).

Aggressive, articulate, sometimes even genuinely caring (these last ones soon to be weeded out, I suspect) “Outside Personal Contacts” roam the streets. Generally known by their initials as OPCs, they could also be called “hooks.”

If you accept a lunch invitation and complimentary gifts to visit their facility, you will meet a “liner,” the next big fish in the chain. Once his pitch is made and your wallet-hand deemed properly oiled in comes the “closer”--or maybe “sinker” is more like it because if you sign his contract, you’ll have swallowed the carefully orchestrated production, hook, line and sinker.

Perhaps it’s unfair to heap scorn on the real estate people. If they make real estate tycoons richer, the construction boom they fuel is also a rare fountain of employment in a country that needs it.

The sudden proliferation of timeshare salespeople (“Oh no, this isn’t timeshare, this is interval ownership ,” is a sure indication you’ve got one on your hands) offering complimentary bottles of Kahlua and Jose Cuervo from sidewalk kiosks is the official sign that Cabo San Lucas has joined the ranks of Mexico’s biggest and most glamorous resorts.

But a few things still set it apart.

Begun from near scratch, Cabo remains far smaller than its competitor resorts. It will likely stay that way owning to the scarcity of water.

The shops, restaurants and hotels that have sprung to life in the past five years give the town a sheen--and some say a cultural homogeneity--that is more Californian than Mexican in flavor.

Economic policies of the new Mexican government that have eased restrictions against foreign investment assure this trend will continue.

For some that’s a definite drawback. If you’re looking for quaint old Mexico, colonial buildings and attendants in tipico costume, go elsewhere. But for inexpensive beaches, bathtub temperature water and something to keep your taxidermist busy, go to Cabo San Lucas . . . in the summertime.