About Cabo San Lucas*

Cabo San Lucas is a city at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, in the municipality of Los Cabos in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. As of the 2005 census, the population was 56,811 people. It is the largest community in Los Cabos municipality, and the second-largest in Baja California Sur, after La Paz.

Cabo is known for its white sandy beaches, several world-class Scuba diving locations, and the distinctive sea arch El Arco de Cabo San Lucas. As a result, the Los Cabos Corridor has become a high-end holiday destination with a number of resorts and timeshares along the coast between San Lucas and San José del Cabo.

History

It is thought that the first humans came to the southern end of the peninsula 14,000 years ago. When the first Europeans arrived, they encountered nomadic groups of Pericú surviving on a subsistence diet based on the gathering of fruit, seeds, roots, and shellfish, as well as hunting and fishing. They lived a Neolithic lifestyle, without metals.

The Town's Founding

According to Hatsutaro's narrative contained in the book Kaigai Ibun (as written by David Waldner) when he arrived at Cabo San Lucas on May 1842 there were only two houses and about twenty inhabitants. However, American authors such as Henry Edwards and J. Ross Browne claim that Cabo San Lucas' founder was an Englishman named Thomas Ritchie, aka Old Tom Ritchie. J. Ross Browne says Ritchie arrived there about 1828, while Henry Edwards says that he died in October 1874.

A fishing village began growing in the area when in 1917 an American company built a floating platform to catch tuna and ten years later founded Compañía de Productos Marinos S.A..

The Development Rush

The warmth of the waters at Cabo San Lucas, the beauty of its beaches, the abundance of sport fish, and other qualities, motivated a great number of both foreign and Mexican vacationers to spend their vacations in large-scale tourist developments there, starting from 1974 when the Mexican government created the infrastructure to turn Cabo San Lucas into one of the most attractive centers for tourism in Mexico.

Migration within Mexico

The continued economic growth within Cabo has picked up within the past ten years, thanks to national and international hotel chains establishing roots in this corredor. People from all parts of Mexico have emigrated to the area in the hope of better opportunity, which has resulted in steady growth in the neighborhoods in the northwest and west of Cabo San Lucas.

Tourism

Cabo San Lucas has become an important vacation and spa destination, with a great variety of sites of interest, and timeshares that have been built on the coast between San Lucas and San José del Cabo. The distinctive El Arco de Cabo San Lucas is a local landmark. Cabo San Lucas has the largest marlin tournament in the world. In the winter, pods of whales can be observed in the ocean. They bear their calves in the warm waters there.

Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo are served by Los Cabos International Airport. The town is also a popular port of call for many cruise ships. Cabo San Lucas has a small international airfield, which handles air traffic for general aviation flights and air taxi service.

In 1990 rocker Sammy Hagar of Van Halen opened a nightclub and restaurant, The Cabo Wabo Cantina, with the three other members of Van Halen. In the mid-nineties he bought out the other owners, his band-mates, and assumed complete ownership of the club. He is known to play live at the club at least once a year with his band, The Wabos on his birthday, October 13, and shows often include many famous guests and friends from the music industry. Other clubs in Cabo include Mandala, El Squid Roe, Gigglin Marlin, NoWhere Bar, Tiki bar,The Usual Suspects and The Jungle Bar.

The Corridor

Cabo San Lucas' raucous party atmosphere and San Jose’s laid-back colonial style are bridged by a golf course-and resort-studded Tourist Corridor that stretches between the twin towns in 20 miles of pristine white sand beaches and craggy coves.

Exclusive hotels and gated residential communities attracting a wide clientèle of rich and famous weave seamlessly amid this wondrous landscape and comprise this region known as “the Corridor”. Many of these properties, which are considered some of Latin America’s top resorts, have become havens to Hollywood stars, Fortune 500 C.E.O.s and even the U.S. president during the 2002 Asia-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC). High-end resorts in the Corridor include the One and Only Palmilla, Esperanza and Las Ventanas.

* from Wikipedia

The Slippery LIzzard Guide to Cabo

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