Cabo San Lucas

Cabo San Lucas, dubbed “Miami Beach with Tacos” by some cruisers, sports hundreds of hotels, condominiums, and homes draped over the rocks along the sea.





Off the tourist track, we find a panaderia, tortilleria, fruteria, and places like Lolita’s, a family restaurant near the Capitania de Puerto, where sopa de verduras comes with a big piece of beef…and it’s delicious!


Odyssey at anchor off Cabo beaches...photo courtesy of Scott Stolnitz on s/v Beach House

Sunrise coming into Cabo San Lucas

An overnight from Bahia Magdalena to Cabo San Lucas brings us around Cabo Falso just at sunrise, with no wind, and air temperatures of 64 degrees F.

Puerto Alcatraz

A visit to shore gave us a chance to stretch our legs, hike to the top of the hill for a panoramic view of the bay, and talk with a local family, who shared their bounty…la señora gave us four lobster tails that tasted all the better for being a gift that we shared with friends.

A whale of a tail

The winds have been up for the past two days, blowing a steady 25 knots from the north with gusts to 28. We pretty much settled into our anchorage off the village of Alcatraz until the winds calmed down and we could go out with our friends Scott and Cindy in their dinghy. The highlight of the day was motoring into the channel where the whales pass by and getting close to several. These two were coming directly toward us...we trusted they would dive underneath...and they did.

Coyotes and Ibis in the Mangrove Lagoon

A couple miles east of the little town of Magdalena, follow the tide into the mouth of the estuary, and you enter a wonderland of shore birds, twisting waterways, and steep sand dunes that transition into dark overhanging mangroves. We saw egrets, herons, kingfishers, ducks, grebes, curlews, ibis, others we weren’t able to identify. Even in our kayaks, we scraped bottom and had to get out and walk a couple of times. The water was deep by the time it got too thick to make our way through the hanging mangrove roots, however.

Bahia Magdalena

The small town of Magdalena has been a fishing cooperative since 1952. Friendly people, a few houses, a primary school, one restaurant, a couple of bodegas, a line of fish-cleaning racks and panga anchors, and the gulls and pelicans that come for their share of the cleanings pretty much make up the village.