El Arco and Playa del Amor: Water Taxi, Glass-Bottom Boat or Kayak?
10 min read
If you can swim and you only do one boat trip in Cabo San Lucas, book the arch and Lover’s Beach tour with snorkelling: two hours, €45.07, 4.9 stars from 375 reviews, and the most-reviewed arch trip on GetYourGuide. If you only want to look at the arch, the one-hour glass-bottom boat to the arch and a beach does it for €9.62, the lowest price on this whole site. And if what you actually want is an hour on the sand at Playa del Amor, a negotiated water taxi beats both. One fact decides the rest: Playa del Amor is the swimming side, Playa del Divorcio is not.
See prices and dates for the arch and Lover’s Beach tour with snorkelling
Everything ends here. The granite of the Baja peninsula runs out at Land’s End, drops into the sea, and leaves behind an arch, a scatter of rocks and two small beaches back to back. On one side lies the Sea of Cortez, flat most mornings. On the other the open Pacific. The beaches are called Playa del Amor and Playa del Divorcio, and the joke in those names is a warning: one of them you can swim at, the other you cannot.
There is no road. Nothing walks in. The only question worth asking before you come is which boat you get into, and the honest answer depends on how much time you have, how much you want to spend and whether you intend to set foot on the sand at all.
Five boat trips to the arch compared
| Trip | Duration | From | Rating | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-hour glass-bottom boat to the arch and a beach | 1 hour | €9.62 | 4.3 (84) | Anyone with a spare hour, small children, people who do not want to get wet |
| Sightseeing cruise that names Lover’s Beach | 3 hours | €15.48 | 4.1 (353) | Travellers on a budget whose whole reason for going is standing on that beach |
| Arch and Lover’s Beach tour with snorkelling | 2 hours | €45.07 | 4.9 (375) | Swimmers who want the arch and the fish in one short morning |
| Glass-bottom kayak tour with hotel pickup | 2 hours | €84.64 | 4.7 (41) | Couples who want it quiet, and anyone staying away from the marina |
| Kayaking and snorkelling, the long version | 3.5 hours | €84.13 | 4.9 (334) | Reasonably fit paddlers with a whole morning and no hurry |
What you are entering
The whole tip of the headland has been a federal protected area since 1973 – just under four thousand hectares of water and rock, with a resident sea lion colony reported at more than thirty animals hauled out on the rocks below the arch. Fishing is prohibited throughout. So is anchoring, and so is leaving anything behind on the beaches.
One thing is worth spelling out because people still do it for a photograph: do not climb on the arch. Climbing the rocks is prohibited inside the protected area, and Mexican reporting on the rule points at Article 420 bis of the Federal Penal Code: its protected-area clause adds up to two years’ imprisonment and up to a thousand day-fines on top of the underlying environmental offence. Nobody is going to arrest a tourist for standing on the sand. That is not the point – the point is that this is a criminal statute and not a park notice, and the boat captains know it even when their passengers don’t.
The cheapest way: a panga from the beach
Water taxis here are pangas – open fibreglass boats, no schedule, no ticket office. You find one at Playa El Médano or in the Cabo San Lucas marina, you agree a price, and it takes you round to the beach.
Two things decide whether this goes well. Agree the price before you get in, because it is negotiated and not posted; recent reports put a round trip at somewhere around 200 pesos per person, and that figure is a starting point rather than a rate. And agree the pickup time and stick to it. The boat that dropped you is not obliged to wait, and there is nothing on that beach to wait with: no vendors, no shade worth the name, no fresh water. Whatever you want for two hours in direct sun, you carry ashore yourself.
The panga is the right choice if you want the beach and nothing else, and you are comfortable arranging things in Spanish or with hand gestures. It is the wrong choice if you want a guide, a fixed time, or a receipt.
The cheapest bookable way: the glass-bottom boat
The one-hour glass-bottom boat to the arch and a beach is €9.93, the lowest price on this whole site. It leaves from Pochos Cabos Activities on the Médano seafront, takes in the arch, the sea lions and the so-called Pirate Cave, and has a toilet and bottled water on board – which matters more than it sounds, given what the beach does not have.
Read the beach stop carefully, though. The booking page offers time at one of three places: Pelican, Lover’s or Divorce Beach. That is the operator’s choice on the day and not yours, so if landing specifically on Playa del Amor is the reason you are going, ask before you pay, or book something that names it.
Check availability for the one-hour glass-bottom boat
The one that does name it is a sightseeing cruise to the Land’s End arch with a stop at Lover’s Beach: three hours, €15.48, and by some distance the most-reviewed cheap arch trip here with 353 reviews. It also carries the lowest rating of any arch trip here with more than a hundred reviews, 4.1 stars. Both of those facts are true at once and both belong in the decision – a great deal of people take it and a noticeable minority are not delighted. Read the recent reviews rather than the average.
The one most people actually book
The arch and Lover’s Beach tour with snorkelling is the most-reviewed arch trip on GetYourGuide: two hours, €45.07, 4.9 stars from 375 reviews. It covers the arch, the sea lion colony and the caves around Lover’s Beach, and it snorkels at Pelican Rock, the sheltered wall inside the bay where most of the fish are.
That combination – arch plus snorkel in one short trip – is why it outsells everything. If you only do one boat thing in Cabo San Lucas and you can swim, this is the default.
The slowest and best way: paddling
Two kayak trips go round the same water under your own power, and both cost roughly eight to nine times the glass-bottom boat.
The glass-bottom kayak tour to the arch and Lover’s Beach is €84.64, two hours, 4.7 stars from 41 reviews, and it includes hotel pickup – and, unusually and worth noting, a full refund if the main sights cannot be reached safely. An operator who writes that down is telling you something honest about how often the sea says no.
The longer version, kayaking and snorkelling at the arch and Lover’s Beach, runs three and a half hours at €84.13 and holds 4.9 stars from 334 reviews. You are close to the water, you hear the sea lions rather than an engine, and you are working. In the middle of the day, in this sun, that last part is not a detail.
See dates for the long kayaking and snorkelling trip
Which side of the beach you may swim at
This is the single fact to take away. Playa del Amor faces the Sea of Cortez and is usually calm; that is the swimming side, and it is where the boats put you ashore. Playa del Divorcio, a few steps away across the sand, faces the open Pacific, and entering the water there is prohibited – heavy shorebreak and dangerous currents, in a place with no lifeguard and no way to get help quickly. The local nickname for it before somebody invented the friendlier one was Suicide Beach.
Look at it, photograph it, do not go in.
What actually decides your day
Swell. Landing on Playa del Amor depends on the state of the sea, and on a bad morning a panga cannot put you on the sand at all – you see the arch from the water and go home. That is not an operator failing you; it is the reason the kayak trip writes a refund clause into its own listing – and that clause names Port Captain restrictions alongside the weather. Those happen: in August 2026 the authorities temporarily restricted access to the arch zone and to Playa del Divorcio after heavy swell, with black flags ashore and fines for boats that ignored it.
Our recommendation
For most people: the arch and Lover’s Beach tour with snorkelling, €45.07. Two hours, the arch, the sea lions and Pelican Rock, and the strongest record of any arch trip here at 4.9 stars from 375 reviews. If the forecast is rough, this is also the right booking, because it is worth doing from the boat even when nobody gets ashore.
On a small budget: the one-hour glass-bottom boat at €9.93. You see the arch, the sea lions and the Pirate Cave, you stay dry, and it is over in an hour. The catch is the beach stop – one of three, the operator’s choice. If the beach is the point, the three-hour cruise at €15.48 names Playa del Amor, and you accept 4.1 stars for the saving.
If the water is clear and you have a morning: the long kayaking and snorkelling trip at €84.13. Quiet, close to the surface, 4.9 stars from 334 reviews. If you are staying away from the marina, the shorter glass-bottom kayak at €83.40 includes hotel pickup instead.
Not for everyone. The kayak trips are work in strong sun – if that sounds like the opposite of a holiday, skip them. And if it is flat and you want nothing but an hour on the sand, none of the bookable trips beats a negotiated panga; just agree the price and the pickup time first.
All of it, forty-four offers from €9.93, is on the El Arco boat tours page. The snorkelling that goes on beyond the bay – sixty-nine offers from €9.93 – is under snorkelling in Los Cabos.
