Back to the Basics : As Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas Booms as a Resort, Many Fishermen Seek Out Nearby Alternatives

A 12-foot blue marlin swings from the scale on the beach, its 5-foot-9 captor dripping sweat as he poses with his catch.

Three 70-pound tuna hang from large hooks, admired by onlookers before being hauled to the cleaning station.

Weary fishermen step from the boats and report their catches to the beachmaster before hot-footing it under a blazing afternoon sun to the comfort of their air-conditioned rooms. They wander out later for drinks and an evening dinner, then back to their rooms to sleep.

The routine is typical in Buena Vista, a town that time forgot, where progress is slow and the day long.

Did these people take a wrong turn?

There’s a city full of life south of town, down Highway 1 past Santiago and the little-known Santiago zoo; past the Cabo San Lucas airport and on to the city itself.

Cabo San Lucas at land’s end, where arches of weathered rock rise from an aquamarine sea. Cabo San Lucas is billed as “the Sportfishing Capital of the World” and has served such billing well. Exotic fish of all sizes and shapes hit the scales each afternoon.

You can catch your marlin in Cabo San Lucas. Afterward, you can catch a fashion show. The city has high-rise hotels, motels, upscale homes and condos. You can shop, swim, dive and dance well into the night--upside down on a barroom marlin scale if you have a mind to.

“We went last year from 1,500 rooms to almost 3,000 rooms,” says Luis Bulnes, owner of the Solmar Hotel at land’s very end.

Then there is Buena Vista. You can blow through town without even noticing there is a town. A tourist mecca this is not. There is nothing here but the Baja desert broken by shoddy homes and dirt roads, leading to vast stretches of sandy beach broken by the waterfront homes of the more wealthy.

And by the half-dozen or so low-rise hotels that cater to tourists who are offered little except good food, a colorful sunrise and bountiful sea.

“That’s the attraction,” Rick Meyer of Covina said while sitting beneath a ceiling fan, cold drink in hand.

“I don’t go to Cabo anymore, it’s too commercial.”

Meyer’s sentiments are met with nods of agreement by most of the patrons relaxing in the bar at the Hotel SPA Buenavista, in the heart of the region known as the East Cape. And chances are, similar opinions are voiced throughout the East Cape hotels that dot the shores of Bahia de las Palmas, 60 miles north of Cabo San Lucas.

“I went (to Cabo San Lucas) the last time. . . . I couldn’t get out of there fast enough,” says Harv Evans, 67, who enjoyed the place more when there was a dirt airstrip behind the harbor and only a few small hotels catering to hearty fishermen.

Evans, a regular visitor to the area for 25 years and now a U.S. representative for two East Cape hotels, remembers when there were only four hotels in Cabo San Lucas. Cantinas had dirt floors. Rooms were dirt cheap. The view of the harbor was magnificent.

“Now the Finisterra (Hotel) is the biggest, I think, and that (Plaza de) las Glorias blocks the harbor,” Evans says.

“You can’t even see the water; it’s a crime. They overbuild. There are more hotel rooms than they can fill. If they fill every seat on all the planes that fly there, there’s still not enough people to fill all the rooms.”

Current projects in Cabo San Lucas include a 350-room hotel being built on the shores of the corridor , a stretch of beach between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, and a four-lane highway between the Cabo San Lucas airport and Cabo San Lucas, a 30-mile stretch.

Junk mail has arrived at Cabo San Lucas. Elevators are on the way.

“This area is really blowing up,” agrees Bulnes, who adds that at least three golf courses are already well into the planning stages.

Meanwhile, independent fishing fleets at the popular resort city are struggling to survive, and some hotel fleets are shrinking. Other hotels share their fleets as they are gearing more toward resort-minded clientele.

Prices for most goods and services--including cruisers, most of which go for up to $300 a day--have skyrocketed.

“People down there don’t even fish anymore for the most part,” Evans says.

“Most of them are just there to lie around a pool, and if a person does fish, they’ll fish maybe one day.”

The serious fishermen, many say, are finding the city has too many distractions and are looking for new places. And they are finding one up the road at the East Cape, which offers some of the best fishing in the world for blue and striped marlin, sailfish, dorado, roosterfish and tuna.

Evans recalls fishing out of Palmas de Cortez with one of Frank Sinatra’s bodyguards in August. They caught four blue marlin and two dorado by noon.

“We were so tired, and out of beer, so we decided to quit,” Evans said.

“We’re on our way in and we see another tail (of a billfish) after our lure. We thought it was a sailfish, but it turned out to be a striped marlin. We’re in eating lunch at 1 o’clock and we’ve got five marlin and two dorado.

“So, the next day we just went surf fishing and we counted them, there were 22 different varieties of fish we got in one day.”

The day after that, the two combined for 11 dorado, two tuna and another blue marlin.

“The people here, they come to fish,” says Chuy Valdez, owner of Hotel SPA Buenavista, one of six hotels in the region.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a banker or lawyer. . . . Everybody’s a fisherman.”

Such has been the case since Herb Tanzy built the Rancho Buena Vista Hotel more than 30 years ago--when the southern Baja peninsula was nothing more than a sparsely populated desert.

Since then, only a few hotels and trailer parks have sprung up along the shores of the picturesque bay. Most are expanding to accommodate the growing number of fishermen traveling to the East Cape:

--Palmas de Cortez started as Hotel Bahia de las Palmas with 20 rooms. It now has 62.

--Rancho Buena Vista opened with 40 rooms and now has 55.

--SPA Buenavista, a converted mansion, started with 11 rooms and now has 40, with more planned.

Further, most of the hotels are planning to stay open year-round rather than close for the windy season starting in August. Boardsailors have discovered the area.

Villas and condos in Buena Vista, although not completed, are now being offered for sale. Tio Pablos, up the road from SPA Buenavista, serves American-style hamburgers and provides U.S. sports programs via satellite dish.

But as long as the Mexican government maintains a hands-off policy for the East Cape region--except where taxes are concerned--it does not figure to change drastically in the near future.

“We don’t get too much attention from our government,” Valdez said.

“In one way we are jealous, but in another way we are happy because we are doing our things our way, slowly. We don’t want to be big , we’re not thinking like that.

“The way we’re working here, like with my expansion, we’re thinking of building only 60 rooms, not 200 rooms. That gives us the opportunity to meet our guests like we’ve been doing for years . . . 120 people we can meet. For us, it’s very important to have communication with our guests.”

Valdez, as he has since he opened for business 15 years ago, still greets his guests as they leave the beach each morning and return each afternoon.

They tell him about the marlin that put up a valiant fight, they show him the tuna that will fill their freezers. They pose with their catches, then hurry across the sand to the comfort of their rooms.