LGBTQ travel: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico – Gay City News
The recently remodeled Corazón tower at the Corazón Cabo Resort & Spa brings affordable luxury and upscale Mexican fiesta vibes to the very center of Cabo San Lucas, located at the tip of Baja California, a direct, non-stop flight from New York City, Dallas, Los Angeles, and other major US destinations. Neither Cabo nor Corazón is an LGBTQ hot spot, but they’re both incredibly comfortable for and welcoming to LGBTQ folks, and particularly popular with gay couples.
Amenities
The resort offers sufficient amenities to keep you entertained and pampered during a long weekend stay. During this trip we only left the resort once to visit a remote beach (see below). After months of hard work, it was exactly what we needed.
If you can tear yourself from your private balcony hot tub, you’ll want to head to the resort’s Beach Club to enjoy Playa El Medano. Book a plush cabana or side-by-side chaise lounges, order from the lunch and bar menu, and enjoy the constant stream of city-sanctioned hawkers of massage and mariachi services, surprisingly well-crafted souvenirs, cheesy hats, and bizarrely worded sashes (“Eat my booty”) destined for boozy bachelorette parties.
We ordered room service a shameful number of times — it’s incredibly prompt — but we also enjoyed the tasty treats at the resort’s numerous à la carte restaurant options, including Aleta, Rooftop 360, and Baja Brewery. Seafood is a specialty, as is Mexican cuisine, naturally, but worry not: You can always order a hamburger and other familiar dishes. Rooftop 360 is the highest open-air dining/cocktail spot in town and offers breathtaking views all around. It’s sublime at sunset. The brewery is breezy, laid back, and fun, with live music and streaming sports stations. Book a treatment at Sparitual, the onsite spa. It’s pricey, but the amenities (sauna, steam room, hot tub) and therapists are top-notch. An 80-minute massage ($180) left me pleasantly sore and ready for bed. Rquest Edgar or Brandon.
These amenities are important, but the best one is the staff which is well trained and constantly working to keep the resort clean and you happy. When you visit, ask for Michel (pronounced “mitch-el”), the experience manager. He takes care of everyone incredibly well and keeps a special eye out for LGBTQ guests.
Room/rates
Book direct on the hotel website for the best deals. Our room in the remodeled tower, a 400-square-feet Infinity King Ocean View with Hot Tub, starts around $550 per night in the busy winter season. It sleeps two and includes a Nespresso machine, a safe, and daily service. (Cabo is expensive — it’s surrounded by ocean, desert, and mountains, so nearly everything must be shipped in — so that price is on par with similar resorts.) Marina and City View rooms are also lovely, but we prefer ocean view accommodations, where you can enjoy the breathtaking views of the busy bay and mountains while sipping your Caffe Lungo, or order a bottle of wine and ease into the steamy hot tub with your honey and watch the moon rise over the bay.
Nearby experiences
Long a tourist hub, Cabo San Lucas doesn’t offer significant historic or cultural assets. So, no demerits for simply staying at the hotel, though there are fun options outside Corazón, which is located in the center of Cabo’s hotel zone. You can easily walk to the charming marina, where you can find the only Starbucks downtown, or for a popular, delicious local taco spot, check out Wachinango’s Los Cabos. There’s a fun gay bar a five-minute Uber ride away called Chandelier, best Thursday through Sunday nights starting around midnight. If you want to see what Cabo looked like 100 years ago, hop in an Uber and head to la Curva del Soldado beach, an untouched stretch of rocky coast, sandy beach, and rough Pacific Ocean waves about an hour from the resort.
Cabo tips
The best time to visit is December through April — with simply perfect hot, dry, and sunny conditions — and March is the ideal time for whale watching, which you can enjoy without leaving the hotel! It’s easy to think of this part of the world as an extension of the US. We didn’t even end up exchanging any money. You can use your credit cards for almost everything, but you’ll want to bring lots of small US bills to distribute as tips. Arrange airport transfer with Baja Travel Transportation which is reliable and reasonably priced.
NYC-based Ed Salvato is a freelance travel writer, instructor at NYU and the University of Texas at Austin’s NYC Center, and an LGBTQ tourism marketing specialist. For more information on the National LGBT media Association, visit: https://nationallgbtmediaassociation.com/