Los Cabos

As summer approaches, many people like to travel to beach destinations. I love going to the beach. However, I have found that traveling to beach destinations with toddlers is more challenging than traveling to locations that provide more sightseeing.  

For Fourth of July last year we took our son to Los Cabos, Mexico. We booked an all-inclusive package which included four nights, five days at Melia Cabo Real and roundtrip tickets. Our son was about a year and a half old so we only had to pay 10% of a ticket for him to board the plane and sit on our laps. Los Cabos is very close to Arizona- it’s only an hour flight. We had some issues with our flight running late and then being told that because we checked-in last (not the night before like most of the other travelers); we did not have seats on the plane. The airline overbooked their seats which is a very common practice. The airline offered a $250 roundtrip ticket and a compensated night in Phoenix to anyone willing to give us his or her seat so that we could board the plane. No one really wanted to give up their seat and it was looking as though we would have to board the next morning at 6 am (and that was not guaranteed either). Finally, a nice young man took the offer.

By the time we landed in Los Cabos, we were exhausted. Our toddler became very fussy. Keep in mind that we had sat in the airport waiting for the delayed plane for six hours with no assurance that we would even have a seat. The young man that took the offer waited until the last call to take it. Of course when we landed in Mexico, like most travel destinations, we were bombarded with people at the airport trying to sell us timeshares. We finally secured a shuttle that dropped us off at our hotel. Our toddler looked like he was going to have a fit from all the hassle.

Enjoying ice cream

The hotel was very nice. As soon as we arrived, they brought us margaritas and the staff was very welcoming. The room was spacious and clean. They had very nice restaurants with very tasty food. The hotel also had complementary baby-sitting. At that age, our son didn’t want to be left in the daycare room so he hung around us the entire trip. We mostly played in the pool and played a little bit in the beach. The waves in Los Cabos are high due to the high winds and many places are not swimmable. Our hotel had a swimmable beach. We were able to splash around in the beach on our last few days. The hotel also provided some day activities (rock climbing, zip-lining, water volleyball, etc) but we didn’t really participate in many of them. We just wanted to relax and did not want to follow a schedule. 

Beach

We enjoyed the hotel's city tour. We visited “downtown Los Cabos” and then took a boat to Los Arcos (the Arc). It was one of the best parts of the trip. The boat had a crystal bottom so that we could see the fish. Our little guy was tickled seeing the fish and loved that the boat rocked with the waves. After the Arc, we walked around and went sight-seeing. 

 Los Arcos

The trip was fun overall but traveling with a toddler is not a very relaxing. Our little guy wanted to run around everywhere and had a short attention span so we found ourselves working harder than we had expected or wanted. Like my husband says, “We had to keep it moving.” If you are going to travel to a beach location with a toddler, be aware that there won’t be too much downtime to lay by the beach or the pool. It is worth the experience to expose your toddler to the beach and pool to teach him safety.  It is also worth the experience to create memories with your growing toddler. Happy beach travels!