Baja California Sur Travel Facts

GETTING THERE: Baja California Sur is the southern half of the 800-mile-long peninsula that extends from the U.S. border to Cabo San Lucas. To cross the border, vacationers need a Mexican tourist card, which is easily obtained through a travel or airline office. Aeronaves de Mexico flies DC-6s from Los Angeles to La Paz (round trip $93) every day but Tuesday and four times weekly from Mexico City (round trip, $82.30). At the La Paz airport numerous single-engine air taxis are ready to fly tourists the remaining 60-to-90 miles to fishing resorts that rim the Gulf of California, or the Sea of Cortez, as it is often called. The one-way fare is about $20 each. A drive down the parched peninsula is not to be undertaken lightly. Only a few have made the journey over the unpaved roads, and some, like Eric Stanley Gardner, were moved to write armchair adventures on their return. A growing number, however, are discovering Route 15 from Nogales on the Arizona- Mexico border. They cross the gulf at Topolobampo via a ferry that runs on ma�ana time to La Paz. Last summer the Mexican government began a luxurious ferry operation from Mazatl�n on the mainland to La Paz. It makes the overnight trip on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Fares range from $50 down to $4; the charge for autos is $30 up, according to size. The best and most popular way to reach Baja California Sur is by private plane. Each resort, no matter how simple, has its own landing strip. Most of these are merely hunks of desert scraped clean of cactus, and un-lighted. Before flying to a resort, clear customs through a point of entry like Mexicali, Tijuana or La Paz. Fees for private craft can be as low as $1.75 in Mexicali to an exorbitant $40 in Tijuana. Gas-80-, 91-, and 100-octane—is generally available at all resorts and in some of the larger towns at double to triple American prices.

STAYING THERE: La Paz, an 18th century port city of 30,000, curls along La Paz Bay, once famed for its lustrous black pearls. There are several very good hotels. The best is Los Cocos. Set in a magnificent strand of palms, it scatters 40 rooms in a pink network of modern units. It is the only La Paz hotel with its own beach. It also has a swimming pool and terrace for outdoor dancing. Saddle horses are for hire ($1 an hour), and the establishment is serviced at its own dock by the La Paz charter fleet. American plan only—$15 to $17.50 single, $25 to $30 double. Los Arcos, on the waterfront drive, manages to exude a Night of the Iguana aura in its palm-shrouded enclave of eight double bungalows and an 18-room hotel, but it is a perfectly respectable abode. Rates are $12 single to $35 triple. The hotels serve the best food—none rate even two stars, but the Misi�n de Santo Tomas red wine is rather good.

Bah�a de Las Palmas is 65 miles south of La Paz. The resort hotel there, called Bah�a de Palmas, is informal and relaxed (14 thatch-covered rooms; $10 a day) and completely devoted to fishing. The 2,800-foot landing strip is lighted. Rancho Buena Vista is 2.3 miles away in the crescent curve of the bay. It is a determinedly rustic resort with plain barrack rooms ($15 single, American plan) and family meals served at one long table.

Cabo San Lucas has three resorts clustered at its tip. Two, Palmilla, off the swarming Gordo Banks, and Hacienda Cabo San Lucas, snuggled next to a fish cannery by the Pacific, are restrained, elegant and clubby. Both are run by the swashbuckling son of a former Mexican President, Abelardo Rodr�guez, who flies guests in from San Diego in his Lodestars. Each hotel has a 5,000-foot landing strip. The Hacienda, completed last spring, has a weekly package plan for $250 which includes everything but boat and bar bills.

Bud Parr's Hotel Cabo San Lucas at El Chileno, between the two Rodr�guez establishments, is the largest and most lavish of the lot. It perches on a rocky outcrop overlooking a half-moon bay, and Parr has given it the works: a cavernous dining room, tiered terraces slung with stone statues, a waterfall, Olympic pool, onyx bath chambers and a mariachi band. Each of the 62 rooms has a private terrace or a balcony. Rates are $17.50 to $30 per person. There is a 3,600-foot air strip.

PLAYING THERE: La Paz has three charter-boat fleets—and each resort has its own fleet. Cruisers range from $40 to $65 a day, twin 35-hp outboards are $45 a day. Tackle is $3 per rod, and flying fish, the marlin bait, are $1.25 each. Limit is three billfish per boat per day. Licenses are $1 when anyone bothers. Hotels rent shotguns for dove and quail at $3 a gun, sell shells for 30�, a good service, since, even with permits, getting your own gun past Mexican customs officers is chancy. For a pack trip into the Sierra after lion or mountain sheep, the charge of $30 to $35 a day includes guides, mules, dogs, food and overnight stops at ranches high in the mountains where Mexican families provide bed and board in wattle huts. Licenses for dove or quail are not generally required, but the government is only now selling a few $200 permits for the limited spring season on sheep. Deep-water snorkeling, skin diving and water skiing are best done in La Paz, away from the sharks that prowl the coast, but the nerveless can rent equipment at the Cabo San Lucas resorts. In La Paz, Dick Adcock, a certified diving instructor from Los Angeles, runs completely equipped diving barges for $10 a day per person. La Paz is a free port, by the way, and a surprising array of luxuries are stocked in Ruffo Brothers' century-old store.