MAYBE SOMEWHERE THERE'S A DESTINATION FORGOTTEN

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 4, 1993                   TAG: 9304040269
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LOS CABOS, MEXICO                                LENGTH: Long
MAYBE SOMEWHERE THERE'S A DESTINATION FORGOTTEN
Maybe somewhere there's a destination forgotten by clock and calendar. But this stretch of coastline is the land that time remembered.
First, after millennia of starry nights, sunbaked days, scorpion tracks and peninsular calm, we Northerners joined with the Mexican tourism industry to rouse southernmost Baja California and heap it high with conveniences of 20th-century North America. Paved roads, airports, time-shares - most of the comforts of home.
Now we seem to be bringing in the rest of the world, as well. Baguettes. Italian coffees. Half-acre lots for $750,000. Even if you saw Los Cabos just a couple of years ago, there may be a few surprises waiting for you.
The lounge chairs, swimming pools and beaches are still here, of course. But these days, a visitor can stroll by the marina in Cabo San Lucas, nip into a coffeehouse for a cappuccino, contemplate a payment plan on a new condo or play a round on a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. Then there might be lunch in an ocean-view restaurant, surrounded by Antonio-Gaudi-comes-to-Hearst-Castle architecture. Later that afternoon, that visitor can stroll down to the scales, watch the marlin boats haul in their catches, and reminisce about the old days - but soon the call will come to revel in this season's nightspots of choice.
Later that night, the visitor retreats to the tropically lush sanctuary of the landmark Hotel Palmilla, or drowses between the swim-in bar and native desert cacti of the Hotel Twin Dolphin, or chooses among the many other hotels along Highway 1. But if a visitor comes looking for the sleepy Mexican fishing villages that first lured Americans here in the 1950s, the search could last a long, long time.
"Cabo is coming of age," said Frank Maury, 48, who used to sell real estate in Southern California and now runs Francisco's Cafes del Mundo near the marina. "A degree of sophistication is finally coming here."
Of course, not everyone feels the way he does. One successful local restaurateur, disturbed by what Los Cabos has become, confided that he has started investigating possibilities in Costa Rica.
But this place has its charms. I visited in early January just before the winter crowds were due to descend on Los Cabos. (Just as a busy corridor of traffic and resort hotels is melding the towns of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, so has the tourist industry condensed their names into Los Cabos - "the capes.")
There's life in Los Cabos for you: hell-raising, fish-catching and real estate speculation. And in between, snorkeling, sunbathing, shopping and sloth.
Los Cabos International Airport is neat, small, modern and not to be lingered in. Within their first steps, visitors face the carnival-barker baying of young men pushing time-share tours, hotel packages and the like. Presumably, most visitors have made their lodging plans already and can dash past that tiresome scene into the clean air, the desert landscape and the twin towns of Los Cabos.
First comes San Jose del Cabo, eight miles south of the airport. The town dates to 1730, its center a modest warren of streets congregated around a 1927 City Hall building. Estimates of the population vary from 7,000 (from the Automobile Club of Southern California) to 22,000 (from veteran Baja author Tom Miller), but all sides agree that most of these people weren't around 10 years ago. Half a dozen hotels lie just outside town, and a succession of restaurants and tourist-oriented shops line Boulevard Mijares, Calle Zaragoza and the city plaza where those main streets meet. Still, San Jose del Cabo is quieter than Cabo San Lucas, and its business district includes more restaurants than raging nightspots.
From San Jose del Cabo, Highway 1 veers southwest toward the other, more famous, Cabo. Along the way lies "The Corridor," a 21-mile stretch of hills, coastal views, resorts and rapidly dwindling open space.
With the weak American economy lingering, it's not always easy to tell the boom of rising projects from the echoes of those in arrested development. One example: Eclipse, a nightclub named to capitalize on the great astronomical event of 1991, has already closed its doors.
But other offerings continue to multiply. Around the Hotel Palmilla, four miles southwest of San Jose del Cabo, developer Donald M. Koll has crews at work on 27 holes of golf designed by Jack Nicklaus (18 are open for play), along with condominiums, houses and half-acre ocean-front residential lots. These are not modest plans. The Mexican government has agreed to reroute Highway 1 in order to accommodate them, and a sales representative says Koll's asking prices on the half-acre lots start at $750,000.
I stayed one night at the Palmilla and another nine miles down the road, toward Cabo San Lucas, at the Hotel Twin Dolphin, and came away with a sort of lodger's yin-yang experience.
The 36-year-old Palmilla, though it's the elder of the two hotels, feels younger. Desert climate notwithstanding, the site has been transformed into a palm-crowded retreat on a rocky, waterfront point. Greenery on all sides. Whitewashed walls. Cool tile floors. Handsome furniture and an ever-vigilant staff.
The Twin Dolphin, 15 years old and in the same general price range, takes an entirely different approach to its location: It yields to the desert. Owner David Halliburton has surrounded its 50 rooms with sand, cactus and the occasional lizard, and asks that guests turn on their water heaters 15 minutes before showering. Acknowledging the presence of beetles and other native insects, the staff supplies cans of Raid in bathrooms, next to the posh Caswell-Massey Almond Body Lotion, and offers a guide to the plants and animals of the area.
The hotels of Los Cabos, however, have not cornered the market on striking architecture in panoramic settings. Just a little farther along the highway toward Cabo San Lucas lies a restaurant that should be counted among the contemporary wonders of Los Cabos. Da Giorgio is the restaurant's name, and the cuisine is Italian, but the food may be the most unremarkable of its attractions.
Forty feet overhead slants a thatched roof. Here and there, stone columns six feet around jut into the sky. Tile mosaics glitter underfoot, freshwater pools spill into one another. The restaurant, designed by Mexican architect Marco Antonio Mulroy, opened in October 1991 and serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. My advice to the frugal traveler: Go for coffee or dessert, and drink in the view.
In Plaza Bonita, a pinkish-mauvish three-story mall that stands on Lazaro Cardenas between the sea and downtown Cabo San Lucas, Frank Maury chats up the customers at Francisco's. He came, he says, because he one day realized that "there's never been a decent cup of coffee down here. Never."
Last summer, Maury opened Francisco's, offering cups of cappuccino for $3 each, unlocking the doors at 6 a.m. to catch the blinking gringos on their way to the fishing boats. When I found him, he was claiming to sell the only cappuccino in town. Maybe for a while he was - but if Los Cabos offers any lesson at all, it's that times change fast. Just three blocks away, a sign at Molly's American Bakery and Sandwich Shop advertises that same sought-after fuel.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB