First Time in Los Cabos? 11 Things to Know Before You Go

Most first trips to Los Cabos go well. The ones that go slightly sideways almost always go sideways for the same handful of reasons — a transfer nobody arranged, a dinner nobody booked, a beach that looked calm from the road. We cook and drive here every week, and these are the eleven things guests tell us afterwards they wish they had known before they got on the plane.

1. “Cabo” is two towns and the road between them

Los Cabos is a municipality, not a single town. At the southern tip sits Cabo San Lucas — the marina, the nightlife, Médano Beach, the Arch. Twenty miles east sits San José del Cabo, older and quieter, with an art district and a plaza that still feels like a Mexican town. The stretch of highway connecting them is the Tourist Corridor, and most of the big resorts and private villas are on it.

Where you stay decides what your week feels like. Corridor villas are calm and need a car or a driver for everything. Cabo San Lucas puts you inside the noise. San José is where people go when they have been to Cabo before.

2. The airport is farther from your villa than you expect

Los Cabos International (SJD) sits north of San José del Cabo. It is about 15 minutes from downtown San José and 40 minutes or so from Cabo San Lucas on the toll road — call it 40 to 50 minutes door to door with luggage and traffic.

The airport has a domestic terminal (T1) and an international one (T2). Flights from the US and Canada almost always land at T2.

3. Arrange your ride before you land, not after

This is the single most common regret. Arrivals at SJD funnel you through a hall of people offering transport and activities, some of it tied to timeshare presentations. It is not dangerous — it is just an aggressive first twenty minutes after a flight, and it is a poor moment to negotiate a price with children and luggage in tow.

Ride-hailing apps are the other trap. They can drop you at departures when you fly home, but they cannot pick you up at arrivals — SJD is a federal zone and airport pickups by rideshare are not permitted. If your plan is “we’ll just get an Uber at the airport,” you do not have a plan.

Our own answer is a driver holding a sign at the door: see private transportation and airport transfers. Any pre-booked service works — book something. We break the options down in Getting Around Los Cabos.

4. Not every beach is a swimming beach

The Pacific side is beautiful and frequently not swimmable — the surf and rip currents are real. The Sea of Cortez side is calmer, and Médano Beach in Cabo San Lucas is the classic swimming beach.

Mexico’s beaches use a flag system: green and yellow mean conditions are being monitored, red and black mean stay out. Believe the flags even when the water looks flat, and ask at your villa or hotel which beach is right for that day.

5. Drink the bottled water — and stop worrying past that

Villas and hotels stock purified water, and it is what everyone here drinks. Ice at restaurants and resorts is made from purified water. Brushing your teeth with tap water is not the crisis the internet makes it out to be, but drinking it is not the local habit either.

6. Pesos usually beat dollars

Dollars are accepted almost everywhere in Los Cabos. That is convenience, not value — you generally get a worse implied rate paying in dollars, and change often comes back in pesos anyway. Cards work nearly everywhere; small vendors, beach service and tips are where cash earns its keep.

Skip the airport exchange desks, use an ATM attached to a real bank, and if a card terminal asks whether to charge in dollars or pesos, choose pesos.

7. Tipping is expected, and it is not complicated

Ten to twenty percent at restaurants, depending on the service. Something for the person who carried your bags, the driver, the housekeeper. Check the bill first — some places add a service charge, and you are not obliged to tip twice.

8. Book the dinners you care about before you arrive

The restaurants first-timers have heard of — the cliffside ones, the farm ones, the sunset-view ones — fill weeks ahead in high season, and the best tables go first. If a particular dinner is the point of the trip, reserve it before you fly.

The inverse is also true: you do not need to leave the villa every night. Half the point of renting a house here is the night when a chef cooks in it and nobody drives. The restaurants worth planning around are in 11 Cabo Restaurants Our Guests Keep Visiting, and if you want the numbers first, the menus and prices are published.

9. The first morning is the one people waste

You land, you settle in, and then somebody has to find a supermarket for coffee, water and breakfast for six people. That is a two-hour hole in day one.

Fixing it is boring and effective: send a grocery list ahead and have the kitchen stocked before you walk in, or eat your first breakfast out and shop in the afternoon when you actually know what the house already has.

10. Sun here is desert sun

Los Cabos is a desert that happens to touch the sea. The breeze off the water hides how strong the sun is, and the burn people get on day one usually happens between eleven and three, on a boat or by a pool, with a drink in hand.

Reef-safe sunscreen, a hat, shade in the middle of the day, and more water than you think. Two more small things: bring a light layer for evenings from December to March, when it genuinely cools off after sunset, and pack any prescription you rely on rather than assuming a pharmacy will carry the same brand.

11. Know which season you booked

Roughly: October to May is the long stretch of dry, warm, comfortable weather — and the peak prices that come with it. June through September is hotter and more humid, with the lowest fares.

Pacific hurricane season runs May 15 to November 30, and September is historically the most active month. That does not mean a September trip gets hit — most do not — but it does mean travel insurance and a flexible booking are worth more in September than in February. Whale season sits in the winter half, which is part of why winter is busy.

The short version

If you do only three things before you fly: book your airport transfer, reserve the one dinner that matters, and decide who is handling the first breakfast. Everything else on this list is easy to fix once you are here.

When you want the full picture — month-by-month weather, what to book how far ahead, how the corridor actually works — that lives in Before You Fly to Cabo: The Los Cabos Travel Guide.