Los Cabos Beach Clubs: Which House Opens Which Door

The Cabo beach-club question is usually asked the wrong way round. People arrive wanting to know which club is best, when the thing that decides their week is which club their house can get them into, and whether there is a beach near it they are allowed to swim off.

So here is that version. Four clubs, named because our own houses name them, and then the part the old page never addressed at all.

The four clubs our houses actually open

We only name a club here when one of our listings names it on its own page. That rules a lot of things out, and it is the right rule: a club we cannot get you into is a club you will be standing outside.

Punta Ballena Beach Club, on the Corridor. Casa Maravillas sits inside the Punta Ballena community and its listing describes the access as a privilege of being resident there — the beach club with its Sea of Cortés views, a resort swimming pool, a fitness centre and restaurants. It is an unusually large amount of ground to have the run of.

Fundadores Beach Club, at Puerto Los Cabos on the San José side. Three of our houses carry it — Villa Estero, Villa Piedra Blanca and Casa de Sueños — and all three describe it the same way: optional access, a signature restaurant, fitness facilities and a full-service spa, available at an additional fee. That last phrase is on the listing, which is where you want to find it rather than at the gate.

The Cove Club, at Cabo del Sol. Casa Lomboy is worth reading carefully, because its listing is honest in a way that saves an argument: the Cove Club's amenities — the beach club, the comfort stations, the ocean golf courses — are for members only. Staying in the community is not membership. What the house does give you is the beach, two blocks away.

The Four Seasons club, also at Cabo del Sol, next door to Casa Brooks, whose own page names the championship golf at Cabo del Sol and the resort's beach-club access in the same sentence.

Two more of our houses say only beach clubs nearby and name none, and one notes that day passes are accepted for up to five extra visitors — useful if the group is bigger than the house. Two others mention a club that is still described as upcoming, which is why it is not on this page.

No prices. None is published anywhere official, they move, and the answer that matters is whether the house opens the door at all.

Which beaches you can actually swim at

This is the question underneath the whole subject, and Los Cabos is the one coast in Mexico where it needs asking.

The Los Cabos Tourism Board's Blue Flag list names five swimmable beaches: Chileno and Santa María on the Corridor, Palmilla nearest San José del Cabo, El Médano in Cabo San Lucas itself, and Acapulquito, which is really a learners' surf beach. Every single one of them is on the Sea of Cortés side. The Pacific side of the peninsula is for walking.

So the useful thing is to know which of our houses are near one, and several say so on their own pages.

Casa Mañana at Palmilla Norte describes private access to one of Los Cabos's most beloved swimmable beaches. Villa Esperanza on the Corridor puts it more bluntly — a short stroll from one of the few swimmable beaches in Los Cabos. Casa Bella is a short walk from the beach at Palmilla. Villa Mariposa has direct access to a swimmable beach, Casa Rayrae is steps from one, and Casa Rio de Luna solves it with hardware: a four-seat golf cart and a mile to the swimmable beach at Punta Bella.

In Cabo San Lucas, Villa Marena opens straight onto Médano, which is the one Blue Flag beach that is also a town beach, with everything that implies in both directions.

The houses that are already on the sand

And then the fact nobody in Los Cabos volunteers: not one of our thirty-nine houses here is beachfront, by the test we apply everywhere else — no Outdoor tab opens with the word. On this coast the houses sit above the water, on rock, which is what gives them the views they are famous for.

What some of them have instead is a beach at the bottom of the steps. Casa Bellamar at Playa Tortuga is the closest thing to the real article: an oceanfront entertaining level with a mosaic-tiled heated pool, thatched palapas and a swim-up bar, and the sand below. Casa Edwards on the Corridor and Villa Tortuga at Punta Bella both carry private beach access on their listings, and five houses at Cabo del Sol reach the sand through the community.

If being on a beach is the actual point of the trip, this is the moment to say the honest thing: Punta Mita against Cabo sets it out, and the answer is usually not Cabo.

What a club day is for, here

Cabo's reasons to exist are golf, deep-sea fishing and the Arch — what Los Cabos is known for goes through all three — and the beach club is the afternoon in between, not the week.

Which means the right question to ask the advisor is not which club, but which house: the one with the membership attached, the one a mile from a Blue Flag beach, or the one with the swim-up bar on its own terrace so nobody has to go anywhere at all.

Start with our houses in Los Cabos and say whether the group wants a club day, a swimmable beach or both — because on this coast those are two different houses.