Los Cabos (Mexico)

At the southern-most tip of the Baja California peninsula, where the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez collide with the wild Pacific, is an area of striking beauty and one of Mexico's top resort destinations. Surrounded by a vast cactus desert and ochre-coloured mountains, the azure waters offer diving, sailing and swimming and the area is a world-renowned mecca for sport fishing and surfing.

Los Cabos is an area made up of the two resort towns of San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, sitting at either end of an 18-mile (29km) stretch of exquisite beaches sprinkled with exclusive luxury resorts and championship golf courses. San José del Cabo is the older and more traditional of the two resorts with the unhurried pace of a colonial Mexican village.

Cabo San Lucas started as a simple fishing village and is now one of the favourite beach resorts of the elite, international tourist offering high quality services and an energetic nightlife. Just offshore is the area's landmark and an impressive natural wonder, Los Arcos (The Arches), a wave-sculpted rock formation.

Inland from the beaches, the landscape is sandy desert, brush, cactus and rugged hills rising to the majestic Laguna Mountains, where alpine valleys support oaks and pine trees a mile above the ocean. The few human inhabitants in scattered villages and ranchos share the land with lizards, rattlesnakes, coyotes, deer and a variety of birds and other desert wildlife.

The Los Cabos climate ranges from tropical near the beach to arid inland and alpine in the mountains. Weather is generally warm and dry, and especially mild in the winter. However, summers are hot and often humid, with hurricanes and tropical storms sometimes a threat, and winter frosts are not unusual at higher elevations.

Locality:

Los Cabos is situated at the southern-most tip of the Baja California peninsula and is divided politically into two Mexican states. The northern state is called Baja California and the southern state is Baja California Sur .