My wife and I are very similar creatures and rarely think about doing the same thing twice, especially when it comes to our vacation spots. However, for the last two years we have been going to Villa la Valencia Beach Resort and Spa in Los Cabos to rest and relax in early-mid December before Santa visits the States. Villa la Valencia is relatively new resort (opened in February 2022) perfectly situated between the San José del Cabo International Airport (SJD) and Cabo San Lucas (downtown).
My wife and I have a knack for booking something, but then showing up and upgrading our accommodations. Maybe it's the euphoria of being on vacation or maybe we are just a little bougie, which I certainly know to be true about both of us. As I mentioned, we have been to Villa la Valencia in consecutive years, in December 2023 and then again in December 2024. The first time we went we upgraded our accommodations to a one bedroom suite with a full kitchen, dining room and living room apart from the bedroom. These accommodations also provided us a large porch overlooking the many pools and restaurants, but also a great view of the ocean. When we visited most recently, we secured a little smaller accommodations except on the other side of the resort where we could see the perfect sunrises that Cabo offers.
The choices of cuisine at Villa la Valencia have been very well thought out and we have certainly tried them all a few times. Of course, we chose the all-inclusive options so we could try a few entrees we have not had before. The resort offers a steak house called Latitude, an Italian restaurant called La Taberna, a Mexican cuisine restaurant called El Patrón and a pool restaurant overlooking the beach called Coralle. Admittedly, La Taberna was our favorite, but not for the reasons you might think. While the Italian dishes were amazing, the restaurant offers our favorite tuna sushi rolls that we have probably ordered at least five times over the last two years.
I cannot say we are big on excursions on trips like this, but after our recent whale watching excursion just off the shores of Cabo San Lucas downtown we might start booking more local excursions! Whale watching was not something we'd done before, primarily because it's seasonal. On our most recent trip, the timing worked out absolutely perfect for us because the Humpbacks were down from the Alaska region for several months. Our excursion took us only about a mile off the coast, but to the perfect spot to see these massive whales slowly moving through the water, coming up for air and then slowly retreating back under the water and out of sight. This experience was amazing and we literally were only 20 feet from these creatures that could swallow us in a heartbeat. While there are many other excursions to look at including amazing golf, dune buggies and more we'd highly recommend the seasonal whale watching if that's your thing. Definitely a memorable experience without spending a lot of money.
Cabo has treated us well and for folks from Texas could not be more perfect from a travel perspective. From Austin, we have a direct flight on American Airlines where flight time is only about 2.5 hours. Add in the 30 minute private car ride from the airport to the resort (with a cerveza in our hands of course) and we are eating tuna rolls in only about three hours from leaving Austin. Definitely worth the trip, an amazing getaway for us before the business of the holidays and a place that we will be back to sometime soon.