Barks and canoes of native fishermen were sometimes blown out to sea. Spanish galleons plying the lucrative Manila–Acapulco trade route were attacked by pirates as they attempted to take on fresh water in what is now San José del Cabo. Sailboats perished in the seasonal storms that wracked the Sea of Cortés, steamships ran aground near outlying Pacific islands. Warships were cannonaded, whaling brigs and sea otter hunters foundered, fishing trawlers were broken upon rocky shores. A few ships were even sunk voluntarily to drive dive-related tourism.

These legendary shipwrecks and their ill-fated crews are as much a part of the history of Baja California Sur as the indigenous peoples, missionaries, ranchers and developers who helped tame a rough and rugged land. 

San Juanillo – 1578, Secret Location

In 1565, two Spanish navigators, Alonso de Arellano and Andrés de Urdaneta, made a propitious discovery: in order to catch the Kuroshio Current to travel from Manila to Acapulco, boats were obliged to sail north as far as Japan before crossing the Pacific to California. The resulting two and a half century galleon trade filled Spain’s colonial coffers, as each year Mexican silver was sent to Manila to purchase Chinese silks, porcelain and other Asian luxury goods. The first of these galleons to come to grief was the San Juanillo, which ran aground somewhere between Tijuana and Cabo San Lucas in late 1578 or early 1579, spilling her riches onto the sand. The actual location, described only as a desolate and remote stretch of coastline, has long been a closely held secret. Beachcombers discovered pieces of Ming Dynasty porcelain in the 1970s, and other precious treasures were later salvaged by the INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) in cooperation with San Francisco based nautical historian Edward van der Porten.

Santa Ana – 1587, Cabo San Lucas 

The immensely lucrative Manila–Acapulco Galleon Trade proved irresistible to English and Dutch pirates, who would often use the Land’s End headland in Cabo San Lucas as cover, lying in wait for the treasure laden ships as they rounded the cape to take on fresh water in San José del Cabo. Privateers led by 27-year-old English sea captain named Thomas Cavendish famously sacked the Santa Ana on November 4, 1587, after a six-hour sea battle between the galleon and Cavendish’s smaller, more maneuverable ships, Desire and Content. The English freebooters took a fortune off the Santa Ana before offloading her crew on what is now Médano Beach and setting her ablaze. Amazingly, Spanish crew led by Manila trader and future California explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno were subsequently able to restore Santa Ana to seaworthiness, sailing her to the Mexican mainland. Cavendish and Desire regained England with their riches. Content was lost at sea, giving rise to innumerable rumors of buried treasure along the coastline of present day Baja California Sur.

El Triunfo de la Cruz – 1737, Isla San José

Plagued for years by the difficulty of getting supplies from the mainland, Jesuit missionary Juan de Ugarte decided in 1719 to build a ship, the first ever constructed on the Baja California peninsula. Assisted by an English shipwright named William Strafford and Cochimí Indians, Ugarte used native güéribo trees for timber, hauling the wood down from the mountains to Mulegé, where El Triunfo de la Cruz (The Triumph of the Cross) was launched on September 14, 1720. This ship – estimated to have been some 50 feet in length – did dutiful service for well over a decade, making over 70 trips to the mainland. She was lost off the coast of Baja Sur in 1737 after transporting Yaqui reinforcements to Nuestra Señora de los Dolores Apaté, a mission that acted as a military headquarters during the Rebellion of the Pericúes. Fittingly, El Triunfo de la Cruz rests forever beneath the sea she crossed so many times. 

Independence – 1853, Isla Santa Margarita

Bound from San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to San Francisco, the sidewheel steamship Independence was within 300 yards of shore when she struck a rock on February 16, 1853, and immediately began taking on water. When attempts to free her failed, the ship quickly sank near Punta Tosca, at the southern tip of Isla Santa Margarita. An article in the April 2nd edition of the San Francisco newspaper Daily Alta California reported that “Females could be seen clambering down the sides of the ship, clinging with deathlike tenacity to the ropes, rigging and larboard wheel. Some were hanging by their skirts, which unfortunately, in their efforts to jump overboard, were caught, and thus swung, crying piteously and horridly, until the flames relieved them from their awful position by disengaging their clothes, causing them to drop and sink in the briny deep.” Tragically, 132 of the 415 passengers and crew drowned or were burned to death when the boilers caught fire. The survivors justifiably accused Capt. Sampson of gross incompetence. The captain, for his part, maintained that he mistook the rocks for whales. It was one of the worst disasters in the history of Pacific steamship trade, and sadly not the last nautical mishap in the Magdalena Bay region. Another steamer, Golden City, went aground on neighboring Isla Magdalena in 1870.

USS H-1 Submarine – 1920, Isla Santa Margarita

Commissioned in 1913, USS H–1 (also known as SS–28, or the Seawolf) was en route from the Panama Canal to San Pedro when she submerged for the final time on March 12, 1920. To this day, no one really knows whether the submarine was grounded intentionally by being rammed into a shoal near Punta Redonda. Well, no one outside of the U.S. Navy, and they’re still not telling. Edward W. Vernon, in his A Maritime History of Baja California, conjectures that the captain purposely grounded her off Isla Santa Margarita to save his crew from chlorine gas, which was leaking from the batteries. Whatever the cause of her demise, the captain – Lt. Commander James R. Webb – was unable to save himself. He and three of his crew drowned while trying to swim to shore. The U.S. Navy tried but failed to salvage the Seawolf, pulling her off the shoal but losing her in 50 feet of water. The wreck was rediscovered by divers in 1992, and in an ongoing effort to protect her from looters, a new wreck – a WWII era Canadian merchant ship – was discoverd in 2021. 

SS Harry Lundeberg – 1954, Cabo San Lucas

On the 8th day of February, in the year 1954, the SS Harry Lundeberg went to a watery grave at Los Frailes, the rocky sentinels that mark the terminus of the half-mile Land’s End headland. Although built in Vancouver in 1943, the cargo ship was under Panamanian registry, and was transporting a load of gypsum plaster from Isla San Marcos, just off the coast of Santa Rosalía. Local legend has it that the Lundeberg’s first mate, despondent over large gambling losses during the voyage, knowingly steered the ship to her doom. The wreckage was buried for many years, but was partially uncovered in 2014, when the Category–4 Hurricane Odile brought her forward half to the surface. After a brief vogue as a dive destination, the wreck was covered again when another storm remapped the seafloor around Land’s End. 

Inari Maru – 1965, Playa Barco Varado

The first recorded visit by Japanese to the Capes Region was in 1842, when sailors from a Japanese coastal vessel that had blown out to sea were rescued and put ashore in Cabo San Lucas, then home to approximately 30 to 40 residents. In the early 20th century, the Mexican government sought to increase its revenue streams by granting commercial fishing concessions to select Japanese corporations. Several of these Japanese fishing vessels were ultimately run aground, most notably the Inari Maru, a longliner that foundered on rocks in 1965, six miles northeast of Cabo San Lucas. Waves have since washed the wreckage clean, but the mishap remains entrenched in collective memory thanks to the beach’s subsequent moniker: Playa Barco Varado, or Shipwreck Beach. The place where the crew went ashore is now the grounds of a luxury resort called Grand Fiesta Americana Los Cabos Golf & Spa.  

Fang Ming – 1999, Isla Espíritu Santo

On April 18, 1995, the Mexican Navy intercepted a Chinese ship called the Fang Ming, which was illegally transporting 157 immigrants to the U.S. Two years later, another Chinese ship carrying 79 undeclared passengers met a similar fate. The unfortunate immigrants were deported back to their country of origin, but the ships were seized and held at Puerto San Carlos, a fishing port on the coast of Magdalena Bay. There local conservationists hatched a plan to turn them into the first ever intentional artificial reefs off the Baja California peninsula; which, after the two vessels were cleansed of fuel and other pollutants, was accomplished near Baja California Sur’s capital city of La Paz in 1999. The 185’ Fang Ming was sunk in 70 feet of water off the west side of Isla Espíritu Santo, and now hosts thriving colonies of fish, mollusks and sea turtles. The smaller ship, recorded only as NO3, was sunk soon after off Isla Ballena. These are the latest, but surely not the last of Baja Californis Sur’s legendary shipwrecks.

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Saludos from Co-Founders…

Chris Sands – Writer  and Michael Mattos

The post Legendary Shipwrecks of Baja California Sur appeared first on CaboViVO.

September is a time when storms are very much on the mind of all Cabeños. Blessed with wonderful weather for most of the year, September is the region’s most humid, rainy, and uncomfortable month by far. It’s also the heart of the slow season, contributing to residents’ general sense of malaise. In a place where beachgoing and bar-crawling have been elevated to the status of fine arts, the most popular September pastimes in Los Cabos may be adjusting the air-conditioner, and checking the latest Eastern Pacific updates on the National Hurricane Center’s website.  

The latter is an anxiety provoking exercise, of course, which is why I waited until the end of the month to publish this remembrance of storms past. Who can concentrate on what happened years ago when some new storm may be whipping up fresh dangers? 

Now that the September threat is banished for another season, however, we can relax enough to consider things from a more historical perspective. Older residents will remember several of these storms. Perhaps thinking of them will bring back bad memories – tragedy and loss are a hurricane’s constant companions – but positive emotions may also be evoked. We survived these storms, after all. Meaning, we learned things about ourselves and our neighbors in the process. For all of the madness of Hurricane Odile, for example, it’s inarguable that it brought many neighbors and communities closer together.

Other storms belong to the distant past. Either they occurred before we were born, or before we made Los Cabos our home. These are snapshot glimpses of bygone eras. It’s tempting to think of them as simpler times, until you remember the global conflicts (like World War II, for instance) that were taking place contemporaneously. Old photos of hurricanes often seem to share a distressing sameness. The storm itself is represented by the fronds of palm trees whipping in the wind, while the aftermath is symbolized by a chaotic devastation in which everything is blown to hell and gone. But each storm was a one-of-a-kind event, bringing its own special strain of calamity and misadventure.

If you love Los Cabos, you should be interested in how it evolved into the place it is today, and curious about the people whose courage in the face of adversity helped to shape its past, present, and future. 

With that in mind, here’s a look back at seven of the worst storms in Los Cabos history. The criteria for inclusion was not necessarily the strength of the storm – although three of the storms discussed below reached Category 4, and another Category 3 – but rather the most potent combination of strength, civil disruption, and destructive power.

La Inundación de 1939 – September 14, 1939

The U.S. pioneered the naming of tropical storms in the early 1950s, as a way of lessening confusion when two or more were active at the same time. So there’s no name by which to personalize what was inarguably one of the worst storms in Los Cabos history, nor is there much reliable information about the nature of the storm, or its wind speeds. What we do know is that it knocked down every house in Cabo San Lucas. That alone qualifies it for this list. 

“1907, 1918, oh much suffering; another one in 1927, many animals and fruit trees lost,” recalled local historian and professor Fernando Cota in C.M. Mayo’s Miraculous Air.  “And then there was the chubasco of 1939 … Some people rode it on horseback from Cabo San Lucas – it was impossible to cross El Tule in an automobile – and they told me when they passed by the school:  Cabo San Lucas is gone! So we went there on horses. We sent some mules across El Tule first because they are more surefooted, and if they can cross, the horses follow. We rode and walked through the night and we arrived at sun-up. From the sea to the foothills of the sierra there was nothing but broken pieces of cardón cactus. There were no references, everything had disappeared.

“Not many died, only five, because the chubasco came down in the daytime. Had it been at night, that would have been different. But they lost everything, their clothes, their dishes, their beds. Forty families! The Governor, Lt. Col. Rafael M. Pedrajo, he delivered the material for 40 houses! I don’t know how he did it. The floors and walls were of wood, the roofs of corrugated iron. For 40 families! Incredible, such a work. They should put his name on a street, a monument, something.”

“They” haven’t, but it’s deserved. Regional politicians have rarely, if ever, displayed this level of competence.

Hurricane Liza – Category 4 – September 30, 1976

Liza spared Cabo San Lucas, but devastated La Paz. In fact, there’s little doubt this is the worst storm ever to hit Baja California Sur’s capital city. A category 4 storm at her peak, Liza’s winds were in the 100 mph range when she reached La Paz on the evening of September 30, 1976. 

It wasn’t the wind, however, but rain that did the most damage. Torrential rains caused a 30 foot-high dam to burst, sending a deluge of water towards the city that overwhelmed everyone and everything in its path. The coursing water and resulting mudslides left about 40,000 people homeless, 20,000 of them in La Paz proper. For some context, the city’s population at the time was 85,000, which means an astonishing 23% of residents were homeless as a result of the storm. 

Many others weren’t even that lucky. Maria Faustina Wilkes Ritchie, in her book El San Lucas que yo conocí, recalled (in translation): “Then came the sad dawn of the city. There were corpses everywhere, without any identification, with no one to claim the bodies.” 

As is often the case with hurricanes, conditions were exacerbated by the fact that there was no electricity, no fresh water, gasoline, or telephone service. So in order to avoid a health crisis, city authorities ordered the bodies buried in mass graves in the Panteón de Los Sanjuanes. 

The combined deaths from Liza are now estimated at 1,263. In human costs, this is the worst disaster in the region’s history. 

Hurricane Paul – Category 2 – September 29, 1982 

Hurricane Paul is also remembered as a historically deadly storm, although fortunately for Los Cabos, its worst effects were elsewhere. The storm formed off the coast of Central America, as most do in the Eastern Pacific, and it actually made an initial landfall in Central America – killing 2,000 and doing massive damage in El Salvador and Guatemala – before raging up through the Pacific Ocean and delivering a left cross to Los Cabos. 

Category 2 winds and gusts as high as 120 mph accompanied Paul’s landfall in Baja California Sur. Paul left 9,000 homeless amid widespread damage in San José del Cabo, before making his way up to La Paz. Some 3,000 in the capital city were evacuated from low-lying areas in preparation, and a reported 85 homes ended up sustaining significant damage, as telephone lines were downed, knocking out communication between San José and La Paz. 

Perhaps as a belated response from Liza six yeras earlier, both Army and Navy units in the area were on high alert. Luckily, however, no deaths were reported from Paul’s sojourn in Baja California Sur. 

Hurricane Kiko – Category 3 – August 26, 1989

Only two storms in Los Cabos history – Olivia in 1967, and Kiko in 1989 – made landfall by means of an inside-out track that saw them enter from the Sea of Cortés side, only to rampage across the peninsula and exit by way of the Pacific Ocean. As a consequence, Kiko was one of the rare hurricanes to do its most significant damage along the East Cape and its environs, slamming into La Ribera, Santiago, Miraflores, and Caduaño before crossing the Sierra de la Laguna to the Pacific side.

Kiko’s winds were 115 mph when he made landfall at Punta Arena, just south of La Ribera, and it was this area that took the brunt of Los Cabos’ nearly 12 inches of rain from the storm. An estimated 20 homes were destroyed in the process, and as usual, power was knocked out, with numerous trees and telephone lines knocked down.

Cabo San Lucas, which was spared the worst of the storm’s damage, nonetheless saw a loss of electricity, fresh water, and communications, leading residents and tourists alike to gather at a new bar that had just opened and had generator power. Its name? El Squid Roe. Ice for the drinks, meanwhile, was shipped in by boats.

Hurricane Juliette – Category 4 – September 28, 2001

Hurricane Juliette packed a historically powerful punch. In terms of barometric pressure – which typically drops in inverse proportion to a storm’s growing strength, and is thus a useful comparison tool – she trails only Odile as the strongest Los Cabos storm of all-time. Juliette also trails only Odile in terms of property damage, accounting for $400 million. Taking into effect the inflation of the past 20 years, Juliette is probably closer to Odile’s estimated $1.25 billion in damages than the numbers indicate.

Why so much damage? There is one area where Juliette stands alone, with no comparison to any other storm, including Odile: rain. No storm in the history of México has ever been “wetter.” The scarcely believable 39+ inches of rain Juliette dropped on Caduaño – yes, more than three feet of rain – remains the highest total ever recorded on the Baja California peninsula. Caduaño took the brunt, but a look at the accompanying chart will show how much of Los Cabos was inundated by rain from Juliette.

The combination of Juliette’s slow moving progress and torrential rains predictably resulted in flooding and massive widespread damage. Despite the fact that Juliette was slowing down when she passed just west of Cabo San Lucas – her peak 145 mph winds had decreased to about 90 – news agency Notimex correctly termed it a “clobbering.” The town was isolated from the outside world for days due to lost power and communications. It was a situation that would be repeated to an even greater degree in the wake of Odile.

Hurricane Odile – Category 4 – September 14, 2014

Hurricane Norbert the week before failed to deliver on its expected damages. Odile, by contrast, delivered on just about every level of devastation imaginable. Winds were 125 mph, with gusts blowing even harder, when the storm made landfall near Cabo San Lucas. Odile unleashed much of her wanton destruction on the Tourist Corridor and San José del Cabo, where many hotels and resorts – among other structures – were left in ruins.

Cabo San Lucas certainly suffered too. Watching the hurricane from a bar on Marina Blvd. I saw a car rolling over and over all the way down the street, pushed only by wind; and shortly afterwards a string of windows exploding from the wind’s relentless force. The sound is what I’ll always remember, however, a haunting, unholy keening sound that I inevitably start hearing again – like a dog whistle – whenever a problematic storm is tracking towards Los Cabos.

Odile remains the single worst storm in Los Cabos history. No, she didn’t bring much rain (only 4 to 8 inches), but the wind was category 4, the damages well in excess of one billion dollars. Then there was the aftermath, which was laughably mismanaged by incompetent local officials, although no one here at the time found it funny, as it resulted in looting, robbing, and a host of other problems. 

Whether you believe what was alleged – the municipal president being on an unauthorized vacation in Las Vegas, a prominent law enforcement official caught red-handed with a house full of stolen televisions, etc. – the result was a complete breakdown of law and order, and about four days worth of utter chaos. 

Robbers and looters ran roughshod, to the point that many communities banded together in self-defense. The situation was made worse by the fact that Odile occurred just before México’s Independence Day. The army showed up four days after the storm, and civil order was quickly reestablished, although of course there was still no electricity – power was knocked out clear to La Paz – or any of the other niceties we associate with modernity. The heroes ended up being imported CFE workers, who reestablished power for most within one to two weeks. Not all, however. Some remained without power for a month or more.

Tropical Storm Lidia – September 1, 2017

How can a storm whose winds didn’t even reach hurricane status do this much damage? Wind speeds for Lidia, after all, topped out at only about 65 mph. The answer is rain. Lots and lots of rain. I could’t find any information on the duration of rain for Lidia, but as someone who had a leaky roof at the time, it felt like the rain went on forever.

We do know how much rain Lidia brought, however. San José del Cabo got 12 inches, and the Sierra de la Laguna nearly 19 inches. However much it was, it was enough to cause flooding. Cabo San Lucas always floods, of course, but this instance was particularly bad. The worst property damage, meanwhile, occurred just outside Cabo San Lucas in the Tourist Corridor. In total, damage was estimated at $123 million dollars.

Lidia had her tragic side as well. Five deaths were attributed to the storm in Los Cabos, two via electrocution, and two others by drowning in flooded areas. It wasn’t a hurricane, but Lidia definitely qualified as one of the worst storms in Los Cabos history, and she will be remembered for a very long time. 

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Saludos from Co-Founders…

Chris Sands – Writer  and Michael Mattos

The post Tormenta’d – The Worst Storms in Los Cabos History appeared first on CaboViVO.

But make no mistake. It was Hagar and his hard-rocking Van Halen bandmates who put the destination on the musical map back in 1988; and it’s Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Cantina that continues to be the area’s best live music venue.

No need to choose sides, though. Both rock and country songs feature prominently in our inaugural “ultimate Cabo playlist,” as does hip hop, and even holiday music.

We present the Top 5 songs about Los Cabos:

Cabo San Lucas by Toby Keith

Perhaps it was the 2003 duet by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” that proved country music’s compatibility with sultry sea breezes and golden sand beaches. What’s certain is that Los Cabos has been a big beneficiary of this burgeoning subgenre of “permanent vacation” narratives extolling the simple pleasures of a laid-back life in paradise. Oklahoma born singer-songwriter Toby Keith is a master of the form, and one of the biggest proponents of the Cabeño lifestyle in recent years. “Stays in Mexico” was his first nod to the area, but the baritone ballad “Cabo San Lucas,” off the 2008 album That Don’t Make Me A Bad Guy, is undoubtedly his best. The song perfectly captures the feeling of drifting down to the southernmost point of the 800-mile-long Baja peninsula and discovering you don’t ever want to leave: “I’m leavin’ you this message and if you give a damn/And you wanna call me you know where I am/In Cabo, Cabo San Lucas/Way down in Mexico, way down in Cabo.”

His daughter Krystal Keith sings it real nice, too.

Cabo Wabo by Van Halen

No celebrity is more closely associated with Cabo San Lucas than Sammy Hagar. The former Montrose and Van Halen frontman famously sang of the town’s charms on the latter’s 1988 album OU812 – “There’s a sleepy town as south of the border/If you go there once, you’ll be there twice/Lots of pretty girls, coming by the dozens/The white sand sure makes a tan look nice” – two years before the band opened up a cantina with the same name as the song: Cabo Wabo. Hagar eventually bought out his erstwhile bandmates, and turned the place into one of the area’s most successful clubs. He still shows up for his annual birthday bashes, and to this day, no one evokes (or embodies) the town’s party hearty atmosphere quite like “The Red Rocker.” This year, in fact, he was officially named an ambassador for the destination.

Cabo by Bankrol Hayden

Still only 21-years-old, California native Bankrol Hayden is a rising star in the hip hop world.  Like any Cali kid, Bankrol knows all about the attractions of a Los Cabos vacation. “Met a shawty down in Cabo and she’s a model/Got a villa by the beach, feel like Pablo.” It should come as no surprise given Bankrol’s youth, but he’s got a fesh perspective on the things that define the Los Cabos lifestyle. This is evidenced by, among other things, his drink of choice. While the country guys sing about drinking beer in Mexico, Bankrol delights in shouting out fine Clase Azul tequila. So far, Bankrol’s “Cabo” has logged nearly 10 million views for his YouTube channel.

Beer in Mexico by Kenny Chesney

According to the liner notes for his album The Road and the Radio, country music superstar Kenny Chesney wrote “Beer in Mexico” while vacationing in Los Cabos and hanging out with Sammy Hagar during the latter’s annual birthday bash at Cabo Wabo Cantina. The song peaked at #51 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart back in 2007, but has since become a classic of its kind, albeit with a bit of a twist on the standard “permanent vacation” narrative. Rather than being seen as a final destination, Mexico is posited as a sort of sun-soaked limbo: the kind of place where one can escape, regain some much needed perspective, and “Let the warm air melt these blues away.” The narrator, at a crossroads between getting married and settling down, or staying single and free, puts off any ultimate choice with the sensible decision to “Sit right here and have another beer in Mexico.”

Stays in Mexico by Toby Keith

Las Vegas gets a lot of publicity for promoting the “what happens here, stays here” philosophy, but such sentiments are taken for granted in Los Cabos. The sea and oceanside playground – with its abundance of lively bars and clubs, and surfeit of romantic luxury resorts – has long been a haven for those who want to shake off their inhibitions to do things they’d never dream of back home. “His name was Steve, her name was Gina/They met at a bar called Cabo Wabo Cantina.” So begins “Stays in Mexico,” Toby Keith’s paean to whirlwind vacation romances. The song ends with the lovers at the airport, ready to return to their separate lives. But neither will ever forget the time “They walked down to the beach and started drinking again/Jumped into the ocean for a dirty swim/One more margarita they were falling in love/One more is never enough.”

Bonus Track

Christmas in Cabo San Lucas by Merle Haggard

Bing Crosby never dreamed of a “White Christmas” in Los Cabos, although the legendary crooner was a frequent visitor to the area. There’s just something about 80 degree weather that makes it hard to get into the seasonal spirit … at least from a songwriting perspective. One man who did make an effort to capture the heated up holiday mood, however, was outlaw country icon Merle Haggard. Rather than rueing the lack of snow, Haggard mined the beachfront scenery for  lyrical content in “Christmas in Cabo San Lucas,” one of the more memorable cuts from his 2004 album, I Wish I Was Santa Claus. “There’s tinsel lights on the palm trees/And candy canes stuck in the sand/There’s no snow on the beaches of Baja/and I won’t need gloves on my hands.”

Want your business featured in our directory and promoted by CaboViVO, please be sure to contact us here, thanks…

Saludos from Co-Founders…

Chris Sands – Writer  and Michael Mattos

The post The Ultimate Cabo Playlist: The Top 5 Songs About Los Cabos appeared first on CaboViVO.

In July 2022, for example, the total number of terminal passengers at GAP’s Mexican airports increased by 18.9% relative to the same period in 2019. Tijuana, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, and Guadalajara airports saw increases in passenger traffic of 44.4%, 39.9%, 25.1%, and 4.2% respectively.

From January to July this year, Los Cabos as a destination has welcomed 4,121,200 visitors, of which 2,720,100 were international arrivals (the overwhelming majority from the U.S.), and 1,401,100 were domestic arrivals from within México. In 2021 during the same period, Los Cabos received 2,997,600 visitors, meaning in the course of a single year, tourism arrivals jumped by 37%. Even when compared with the pre-pandemic numbers from 2019 (3,438,200), the destination has seen a massive increase in tourism (about 20%). 

• Seats and load factors: The number of seats available during July 2022 increased by 27.4%, compared to July 2021; load factors for the month went from 77.9% in July 2021 to 82.8% in July 2022.
• New routes:
  • Guadalajara – Toluca: Volaris
  • Puerto Vallarta – Toluca: Volaris
  • Los Cabos – Toluca: Volaris
  • Tijuana – Toluca: Volaris
  • Tijuana – Puerto Escondido: Volaris
  • Los Cabos – Madrid: Iberojet

Company Description

Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, S.A.B. de C.V. (GAP) operates 12 airports throughout Mexico ’s Pacific region, including the major cities of Guadalajara and Tijuana, the four tourist destinations of Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, La Paz and Manzanillo, and six other mid-sized cities: Hermosillo, Guanajuato, Morelia, Aguascalientes, Mexicali and Los Mochis. In February 2006, GAP’s shares were listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “PAC” and on the Mexican Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “GAP”. In April 2015, GAP acquired 100% of Desarrollo de Concessioner Aeroportuarias, S.L., which owns a majority stake in MBJ Airports Limited, a company operating Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica. In October 2018, GAP entered into a concession agreement for the operation of the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica and took control of the operation in October 2019.

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Saludos from Co-Founders…

Chris Sands – Writer  and Michael Mattos

The post How Many People Came to Los Cabos Last Month? A Lot, According to the Latest Airline Figures appeared first on CaboViVO.