Snorkelling Santa María and Chileno: Two Bays, Two Very Different Days

Los Cabos sells snorkelling from boats, and there are sixty-nine of those trips on this site. But the two bays everybody photographs, Bahía Santa María and Bahía Chileno, are free public beaches on the main road between Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo. You can drive to either of them with a mask in a bag and pay nothing.

Whether you should is a real question, and the answer is different for the two bays.

Chileno is the easy one

Chileno is the one to pick if anything about your group is complicated – small children, someone who does not swim well, a day where you want to be able to leave and come back.

It sits directly off the Transpeninsular, Federal Highway 1, and the turn-off takes you into a large free car park. There are public toilets and showers, free to use and, by the accounts of people who use them, actually maintained. Umbrellas and shade can be rented at the entrance, which on this coast is not a luxury.

It was the first beach in Los Cabos to be certified Blue Flag, in 2013, and that certification is about water quality, sanitation, safety and signage rather than about the fish. The fish are there anyway: reef close to shore at the eastern end, and stingrays resting in the shallow sand. Shuffle your feet as you wade in rather than striding – it is the standard advice on Baja beaches and it is the reason rays are a non-event here rather than a hospital visit.

Santa María is the better water and the harder morning

Santa María is a horseshoe cove between kilometre 12 and 13 of the road towards San José del Cabo, tucked in tight enough that the water stays calm when the coast outside is not. It is the prettier bay and the better snorkel. It certified Blue Flag in 2014.

It also has a small dirt car park, and that single fact shapes the whole visit. Arrive early. Local guides put the cut-off at 10am in high season; after that you are circling, and there is nowhere else to leave a car.

Two other things. There is almost no natural shade – bring an umbrella you can anchor properly in sand, and reapply sunscreen. And be careful what you read about facilities: some accounts list a lifeguard tower and showers, others describe nothing but the dirt car park and a few vendors on the sand. Those cannot both be current, and we have not been able to establish which is. Plan the day as though there is nothing there and you cannot be caught out either way.

The flags are not decoration

Every beach entrance in Los Cabos carries a coloured flag, and the system is worth memorising before you are standing in front of one:

• green – swimming safe
• yellow – caution
• red – dangerous
• black – the water is closed
• white – jellyfish, known locally as agua mala

This matters here specifically. During periods of mar de fondo, the long groundswell that arrives on this coast from distant storms, Santa María is among the beaches reported flying a red flag – along with Las Viudas and El Tule. After heavy rain, beaches can go to black flag on water quality rather than waves; that has happened on El Médano in Cabo San Lucas after storms washed rubbish down.

So the bay you drove out to at eight in the morning can be closed when you get there, and nobody will have told you in advance. Have the other bay as your fallback and check the flag before you unpack the car.

Driving yourself, or not

Both bays are on Highway 1, both are signposted, and a taxi from Cabo San Lucas will take you to either. The case for a car is not really the drive – it is that you can leave Santa María at ten when the car park fills, be at Chileno by twenty past, and come back in the late afternoon when the day boats have gone. A taxi makes each of those decisions cost money, so you stop making them.

The case against is equally plain: if you are here for four days and spending three of them on a boat or by a pool, a car sits in the sun. If it does make sense for your trip, it is worth comparing car hire for Los Cabos rather than taking the airport desk’s first offer – and read the excess and the deposit terms before the price, because that is where the difference between two quotes usually lives.

When the boat is the right answer

Three situations, and they are all honest ones.

You want both bays without a car. Kayaking and snorkelling in two pristine bays does exactly that – Santa María and Chileno in one trip, paddled rather than driven, €86.88 and 69 reviews. You arrive from the water, which is also where the fish are. Two limits the listing states and the photographs do not: no children under 7, and a 125 kg weight limit per paddler.

You want the arch and a reef in one go. The catamaran snorkel to the arch and Santa María is three hours on a 46-foot boat with snacks and an open bar, €64.49, 4.5 stars from 121 reviews. This is the most-booked trip that names Santa María, and the reason is the combination rather than the snorkelling.

You want a whole day on the water. A four-hour snorkelling cruise with open bar is €92.91, 4.5 from 110, and a luxury catamaran with snorkelling and lunch is four hours at €155.39, 4.5 from 105.

The open bar question, said out loud

Notice how many of those say open bar. Several of the most-booked snorkel trips in Los Cabos include unlimited drinks, and that tells you what they are: pleasant boat days that stop somewhere with fish, not snorkelling trips that happen to have a bar.

There is nothing wrong with wanting that day. But if you are going in the water, drinking first is a bad idea, and if you actually want to look at a reef for an hour you will have a better time on the kayak trip or with your own mask at Chileno at eight in the morning. Booking the wrong one of these is the most common disappointment in this category, and it is entirely avoidable by reading the inclusions.

What to bring either way

Water, more than you think. Sunscreen and a rash vest, because you will be face-down in tropical sun for as long as you last. Something to anchor for shade at Santa María. Cash, because the vendors are not taking cards. And your own mask if you have one – rented gear is fine, but a mask that fits is the whole difference between snorkelling and swallowing seawater.

All sixty-nine snorkelling trips, from €9.93, are on the snorkelling in Los Cabos page; the catamarans that run these routes – thirty-eight of them from €35.12 – are under catamaran and sailing tours. If the arch is the part you actually care about, that is covered in El Arco and Playa del Amor.