San José del Cabo: where the desert meets the Sea of Cortez

The Church of San José, with its white colonial facade on the central plaza, recalls the Jesuit missionary founding of the city in the eighteenth century.

A short walk away, the Estuary of San José, a natural reserve of freshwater between desert and ocean, hosts over two hundred species of migratory birds.

Continuing toward El Arco, a natural rock formation at Cabo San Lucas where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortés, you observe sea lions on the surrounding rocks.

Between December and April, boat excursions allow you to observe the gray whales that migrate every year from Alaska to breed in the warm waters of Baja California.

Gray whales undertake one of the longest migrations among all mammals each year, traveling over ten thousand kilometers from Arctic waters to the warm Baja California lagoons to give birth.

El Arco symbolically marks the point where two different seas, the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortés, meet at the very southern tip of the California peninsula.