What to do in Todos Santos: a pueblo mágico for the traveler who already knows Los Cabos

There's a point on Highway 19, between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz, where the desert drops down to touch the Pacific and something appears that shouldn't be there: a palm grove. Todos Santos grew around that oasis, a town of brick streets and nineteenth-century houses that lived on sugar —by 1850 it had eight mills—, nearly disappeared when the water ran short, and was reborn decades later as a refuge for surfers, artists and farmers. The Tropic of Cancer runs, literally, through its latitude, with a monument beside the highway.

It has been a Pueblo Mágico since 2006, and long before that it had something harder to grant by decree: a pace of its own. It sits about 80 kilometers from both La Paz and Cabo San Lucas, close to an hour's drive from either: near enough to reach easily, far enough that neither one bleeds into it. This guide is for anyone who has already done Los Cabos, already seen the Arch from a panga, and suspects the peninsula is keeping something quieter. It is.

Getting there

The two useful airports are San José del Cabo (SJD), with the widest range of domestic and international flights, and La Paz (LAP), smaller and often cheaper from Mexico City and Guadalajara. From either one, the drive to Todos Santos takes an hour to an hour and a half on Highway 19, a federal road in good shape that runs tight along the Pacific coast.

We'd rent a car. Todos Santos walks well in its historic center, but the best of the destination —the beaches, Pescadero, the surf breaks, the turtle releases— is spread over some 20 kilometers of coast and local taxis are scarce. A compact is enough; only a few beach accesses are soft dirt. If you're coming from out of town and don't know what to pack, we have a packing list for Baja California Sur that saves you the expensive mistakes.

Suggested itinerary: three days

Day 1: the town and the sunset

Give your arrival afternoon to the historic center: the plaza, the church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar —heir to the Santa Rosa de Todos Santos mission founded by the Jesuits in 1733—, the Márquez de León theater and the galleries that gave the town its reputation as an artists' enclave. The Hotel California is here and deserves an honest stop: the connection to the Eagles song is legend, not documented history, but the building and its bar have a charm of their own that doesn't need the myth. Close the day at Punta Lobos, the fishermen's beach, when the pangas come back with the tide and the pelicans line up behind every boat. It's a working beach, not a swimming one: the wave breaks straight onto the sand.

Day 2: surf and beaches

Before you get in the water. The coast at Todos Santos is open Pacific, not a swimming pool. San Pedrito, La Pastora, La Máquina, Punta Lobos and the beach in front of town all have rip currents and shore break: they are not swimming beaches, however strong a swimmer you are. Playa Los Cerritos and Las Palmas are the reasonable exceptions, but neither has a permanent lifeguard and both throw currents on a big tide. Get in only where you see locals in the water, never alone, and if a current takes you don't swim against it: float, swim parallel to shore and come out at an angle.

That said, the morning belongs to the water. If you've never surfed, Playa Los Cerritos, some 13 kilometers south, is one of the most forgiving spots on the peninsula to learn: kind waves, a mostly sandy bottom and surf schools on the beach itself. If you already have some level, San Pedrito and La Pastora are point breaks over rock that take the north Pacific swell seriously in winter. The afternoon can go to Pescadero, the farming valley next door, among the orchards and a food scene that rivals the town's.

Day 3: turtles, orchards and goodbye

From autumn into winter —roughly September to March, depending on the species and the year— the beaches of Las Playitas and Agua Blanca host sunset releases of turtle hatchlings, coordinated by Tortugueros Las Playitas A.C. It's free, it's orderly, and it's probably the memory that lasts longest from the trip. Confirm dates and times with the organization before you go: there's no fixed calendar.

The morning before fits a garden breakfast and a last walk around La Poza, the freshwater coastal lagoon beside the sea, a step from town, where the waterbirds and the residents of the oasis gather. Access is free and on foot; there are no services and no signage, so go early and bring water.

Where to stay

Akampa doesn't run a camp in Todos Santos, so here's the honest lay of the land. Paradero Todos Santos is the contemporary-luxury reference: concrete architecture and garden among the farm fields in Pescadero, adults only. Hotel San Cristóbal, looking over Punta Lobos beach at the end of a dirt road, has the best balance of design and beachfront location. In the center, Guaycura Boutique Hotel, in a nineteenth-century brick house, and the Hotel California itself let you take the town on foot. In the mid range there's a wide choice of casitas and boutique hotels to rent directly; rates spike from December to Semana Santa, so book months ahead if you travel in high season.

Where to eat

The cooking is, along with the surf, the reason Todos Santos stopped being a secret. Jazamango, from chef Javier Plascencia, is the flagship table: garden cooking and a wood-fired oven in a garden in Las Huertas. Book, especially in high season. Hierbabuena, in Pescadero, takes farm-to-table to its logical end: the salad you order was planted twenty meters from your table (closed Tuesdays and all of September). For a craving with no ceremony, the fish and shrimp tacos at Barracuda Cantina, in Pescadero a step from Playa Los Cerritos, settle any midday after a surf. And for a slow dinner, the center has several tablecloth restaurants in restored houses around the plaza: walk Calle Centenario at dusk and pick the one with the fullest patio.

Other things to do

Art and galleries

The artistic reputation of Todos Santos isn't marketing: since the eighties the town has drawn painters and sculptors who opened studios in the old houses downtown, and today the gallery circuit is an afternoon on foot. Every season the cultural calendar comes alive: the Todos Santos Film Festival, which screens Mexican and Latin American film in the historic Teatro Márquez de León; the Tropic of Cancer Music & Arts Festival in January; and the Todos Santos Art Festival, with open tours of the studios of the town's artists. Dates move from one year to the next, so check the official calendars before you build the trip.

Pescadero and the farms

The Pescadero valley, ten minutes south, is the region's pantry: fields of basil, strawberry and vegetables that supply the town's restaurants. The real way to see it isn't a farm tour but a table: several restaurants in the area grow their own garden meters from the dining room and serve what was picked that morning. Book, especially in high season.

Whale watching from shore

From mid-December to April, peaking between January and March, the gray whale passes in front of Todos Santos on its migration to the lagoons of Baja California Sur. From high points along the coast, La Pastora among them, you can see the blows without needing a boat. To see them up close and in their sanctuary, the destination is Magdalena Bay, further north.

Who it's for (and who it isn't)

Todos Santos is for people who travel by texture: afternoon light on a brick street, a wave with nobody else on it, a dinner that started in the garden next door. It's for couples, for solo travelers with a notebook, for anyone who wants to surf seriously or learn without an audience. It's really the same kind of trip we argue for when we explain how to travel Baja without falling into the all-inclusive.

It isn't for anyone after nightlife, all-inclusive resorts or swimming-pool sea. If your ideal trip is never leaving the hotel, there are better destinations; here the hotel is only the base.

Best season

From October to April the weather is dry and mild and the winter swell lights up the point breaks. From September to March the turtle releases run, and from December to April the gray whales pass along the coast. Summer is hotter and more humid, with kinder waves for beginners and the town at its most local. August and September are hurricane season on the peninsula: not a reason to stay away, but a reason to travel with room to move.

Common mistakes

The most frequent one: treating it as a three-hour excursion from Los Cabos. You see the sign, eat a taco, buy a craft and understand nothing. Todos Santos shows itself at night and early in the morning, once the tours have left. The second: swimming where you shouldn't; the Pacific currents here don't negotiate, always ask at your hotel or ask locals before you get in. The third: coming without a car and expecting to move around easily. And the fourth: leaving dinner at Jazamango or Hierbabuena for "the last day" with no margin; the good places fill up in high season.

A note on conservation

In Las Playitas, a few kilometers north of town, Tortugueros Las Playitas A.C. has been working for years, a local organization devoted above all to the leatherback —the largest turtle and one of the most threatened animals on the planet— though it also protects the olive ridley and the black turtle. Their method is handmade and serious at once: they patrol the nesting beaches, move the nests to an incubation greenhouse that shields them from predators and poaching, and release the hatchlings at sunset with the community and visitors as witnesses. In a single season, tens of thousands of hatchlings can reach the sea that without that work would never have hatched.

We care about telling it because it's the same idea behind everything we do: conservation works when a community lives better because of it. In Todos Santos, every visitor who attends a release, donates or adopts a nest turns their trip into part of the mechanism. That's the tourism we want to exist.

Todos Santos and the sea that continues north

We don't operate in Todos Santos, and that's exactly why we can recommend it without conflict: it's the best door into the Pacific side of Baja California Sur, and it pairs naturally with our expeditions. The same ocean that shapes the waves at San Pedrito becomes, a few hours north, Magdalena Bay: mangroves, dunes and one of the most intense marine events on the planet. From October to December the Marlin & Sardine Run happens there —sardine schools cornered by marlin, sea lions and birds in open water— and our low-impact camp sits in the front row.

And if what moved you was the Sea of Cortez on the other side of the peninsula, that's La Ventana, and further north the reef at Cabo Pulmo, which recovered because a village decided to stop fishing.

If Todos Santos leaves you wanting more Pacific (it happens to all of us), that's the natural next step.

Take a look at the **Marlin & Sardine Run in Magdalena Bay** expedition, or explore the Ocean Safari to take in the whole bay, and check the calendar of upcoming departures.

*See you out there.*