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April 15, 2005 JOURNEYS:  Experiencing Cabo, Without the Tequila Shots

By JANELLE BROWN

In Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a typical winter weekend night, the neon-lighted streets are packed with American tourists buying cheap knickknacks en route to the Hard Rock Cafe. Groaning Pedi cabs haul college kids to nightclubs like Body Shot and Cabo Waco ("where the land ends and the party begins"), where they imbibe two-for-one tequila shots. With its wall-to-wall beach scene, high-rise time-share condos and American chain restaurants, Cabo San Lucas is a 24-hour spring break nirvana.

In San José del Cabo - the sister city to Cabo San Lucas, just 20 miles down the road - the hottest action on a weekend night is in the town square, in front of the adobe church, where local families congregate for their evening constitutionals. Little girls on pink tricycles ride circles around balloon vendors and menudo stands while musicians trumpet traditional Mexican banda from the bandstand. During the day, the town’s beaches have more cranes than Corona-drinking college students. And that, for fans of San José del Cabo, is a blessing.” We like to say that Cabo San Lucas is hysterical, but San José del Cabo is historical," said Alan Baumann, proprietor of the Amigos Smoke shop &Cigar Bar in San José del Cabo. "I think neon lights are even forbidden on the front of buildings here. It's not a flashy kind of place."

San José del Cabo is often lumped in with Cabo San Lucas - together, the two towns are known as Los Cabos (in English, the capes). They anchor the southern tip of Baja California, connected by a strip of white sand beaches and high-end resorts referred to as the corridor. And yet, the average visitor to Cabo San Lucas generally has no idea that San José del Cabo even exists. Despite possessing the charm that its sister city does not, San José del Cabo has been spared the tourist onslaught by its location: a short, but crucial, half-mile inland from the beach.

As a result, while Cabo San Lucas has spent the last 20 years evolving into a package-deal destination, San José del Cabo has remained tranquil, and (at least somewhat) authentic: a colonial town with tree-lined boulevards, boutiques operated by local artisans and renowned restaurants. And thanks to its proximity to the area's most exclusive resorts, it's quietly emerging as a hangout for the well-heeled, famous and discreet, who want to enjoy the Cabo sun while avoiding the CaboWabo way of life.”

Most of my guests go and spend one day in Cabo, and then they come back and say 'Thank God, we didn't stay there!' " said Nathalie Tenoux, 38, an owner of the chic Casa Natalia hotel in San José del Cabo, where actors like Gael García Bernal stay.”I don't even know when spring break is.”

Although Cabo San Lucas has since stolen most of the thunder, it is San José del Cabo that was the original town on the cape. When Hernando Cortés first landed, in 1535, it was a village of Pericu Indians, surrounded by a scrubby desert. Not long afterward, pirates turned thetown's peaceful estuary - a palm-lined lagoon - into a hiding place from which to pick off treasure from the galleons en route to Asia. Spanish Jesuits were commissioned to build a mission in San José del Cabo in 1730, but the Indians weren't very enthusiastic about conversion. By 1734, they had revolted, killed the missionaries and returned to their own way of life.

Three hundred years later, the town still carries the stamp of its colonial past. Surrounding el Centro, the town square, with its pink church (the original mission is long gone; this one is only 65 years old) and modest municipal palace are hilly side streets with gracious old adobe homes. These have been turned mostly into courtyard restaurants and boutiques selling silver, antiques and women's clothes, with charming hand-painted signs.

The estuary, which runs parallel to the town's tree-lined main street, Boulevard Mijares, is now a serene watering hole for egrets, herons, pelicans and an errant steer or two, who placidly ignore the joggers and horseback riders on the adjacent footpath.

On the opposite side of San José del Cabo, in the middle of a highway traffic circle, stands an abstract yellow sculptural interpretation of flower, two stories high. It is the symbol for Fonatur, the Mexican tourist development agency, which has invested heavily in Los Cabos for the last two decades. Thanks to the agency's efforts - as well as the expansion of the region's international airport in 1985 and heavy development by American corporations along the coast - the Cabos area has become one of the fastest-growing (and most expensive) tourist destinations in México.

Although San José del Cabo has avoided the heaviest development, it has benefited by its proximity to some of the region's most upscale resorts. The One & Only Palmilla, which falls within San José del Cabo's borders, recently finished a $75 million refurbishment. The project has quickly turned the resort, which is on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea, into a playground for the rich, complete with acres of vanishing pools, a spa and a Charlie Trotter restaurant. Las Ventanas al Paraíso, the famous luxury resort, is just up the road.

When the guests of these resorts feel the need to venture out, they head straight into San José del Cabo. Javier Piza, 40, an artist and man-about-town who not only owns the chic jewelry boutique Calli with his wife, Laura, but also works as sommelier at two of the town's best restaurants, Tequila and Morgan's, can rattle off a long list of celebrities he has met. "Spiderman: Toby Maguire. Jessica Simpson - I didn’t know who she was, but my 12-year-old was like, 'Wow!' " he said. Bill Gates. Lance Armstrong. Oprah. They look here for a place that’s simple, where no one is going to be bothering them.”

The otherwise modest town has happily catered to its stiletto-heeled clientele, bending its Mexican culture to fit a more urban (and pricey) aesthetic. San José del Cabo has become the de facto culinary capital of Los Cabos. Near the town square are almost a dozen fine restaurants serving the town's distinctive cuisine - a kind of Mediterranean-Mexican (think lobster in tequila sauce) - at prices comparable to Manhattan’s. The town even has a perfect Mexican-European patisserie: French Riviera, which serves flaky croissants and chocolate confections alongside jalapeño-filled crepes. Transactions are conducted as frequently in dollars as in as pesos.