page_title: Los Cabos Municipality
section_title: Geography and environment
hierarchical_section_title: Los Cabos Municipality / Geography and environment
caption_attribution_description: English: Desert and sea at Rancho Punta San Cristobal, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur
context_page_description: Los Cabos is a municipality located at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, in the state of Baja California Sur. It encompasses the two towns of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo linked by a twenty-mile Resort Corridor of beach-front properties and championship golf courses.
  The area was remote and rural until the latter 20th century, when the Mexican government began to develop Cabo San Lucas for tourism, which then spread east to the municipal seat. The main draw is the climate and geography, where desert meets the sea, along with sport fishing, resorts and golf. This tourism is by far the main economic activity with over two million visitors per year. Over 1 million visit from the United States.
  Although San José del Cabo is the seat of government for the municipality of Los Cabos, it is smaller than the other city of Cabo San Lucas. However, because of federal and private investments in tourism, its growth is now rivaling that of the more famous resort area.
  This growth has been regulated to outside of the town center, especially to the south where the beaches are, leaving the historic town center quiet and relatively unchanged.
context_section_description: The municipality of Los Cabos is at the southern end of the Baja California peninsula, where desert meets the sea and the Gulf of California meets the Pacific Ocean. The area was originally underwater, evidenced by the many fossils of marine animals, which are up to 25 million years old. The basement rock underlying Los Cabos formed even earlier, approximately 115 million years ago.
  The municipality has an average altitude of forty meters above sea level. There are three main terrain types, mountain terrain, semi flat areas and flat areas. The mountains consist of the Sierra de la Laguna and the Sierra de San Lázaro, both formed of volcanic rock, covering about fifteen percent of the total territory with peaks between 400 and 1000 meters.  The semi flat areas are located between the coast and the mountain ranges, mostly of sedimentary rock and account for sixty percent of the territory. The flat areas are along the coast, beaches and alluvial plains, which account for twenty five percent of the territory.
  One of the main natural resources is the beaches. Major beaches include Los Frailes, Buena Vista, Agua Caliente, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Chileno and Punta Colorada, often promoted together as the Costa de Oro (Golden Coast). One very popular beach in Cabo San Lucas is Lover's Beach, which is surrounded by dramatic rock shapes. The sea experiences lows of 72–73 °F (22–23 °C) in winter, and highs of 77–84 °F (25–29 °C) during the summer months.
  As it is on the edge of the desert that covers most of the Baja California peninsula, it is one of the sunniest locations in the world, with an average of 320 days of sunshine per year. The climate is characterized as hot and dry to the north of the town of San José del Cabo, hot and semi moist in San José and along the southern coast and temperate and dry in the highest elevations, because of cyclones that hit this area. Average annual temperature is 24C with the coolest month being January. There is a rainy season in the summer, with most rain in September.  The rain and terrain make for a variety of micro climates, including areas with a climate similar to the Mediterranean. Areas between 0 and 400 meters are desert and semi-desert, with many areas having deep sand deposits. Higher elevations get more water and can have pine forests.
  The main surface water of the municipality is the Río San José or San José River, which runs north to south, mostly during the rainy season. Other streams run only during rains and include Santiago, Miraflores, Caduaño and Las Palmas. There are subterranean deposits of water such as the Santiago and San José del Cabo, but the lack of water is the main impediment to human development in the area.
  The Río San José stops just shy of the ocean, with a one km long sand bar creating an estuary, the third largest in Mexico. This pooling of brackish water has created an oasis in the surrounding Sarcocaule desert. The Río San José flows largely underground for 40 miles (64 km) from its origin in the Sierra de la Laguna (Laguna Mountains), although its Miramonte River tributary adds almost an additional 10 miles (16 km). Its tributaries flow down the eastern side of the sierra and include Santa Rosa, Santa Lázaro, San Miguel, San Ignacio (at La Palma), Caduaño, Miraflores and San Bernard.
  The river used to flow above ground until the beginning of the 20th century due to anthropogenic causes. For more than 250 years the Río San José has furnished drinking and irrigation water for the town of San Jose del Cabo, beginning as a source of fresh water for Spanish galleons traveling back from the Philippines. Over the sand bar from the estuary is a bay referred to by early Spanish explorers, including Sebastian Vizcaino, as the Bahía de San Bernabé or Bay of San Bernabé, and now as the Bay of San José del Cabo.
  The estuary is home to both native and migratory birds and aquatic species, 250 species of tropical birds alone.  Most of the migratory species use the area as a stopover on their way to southern Mexico, Central American and South America. It also acts as a nu
caption: The desert and sea at Rancho Punta San Cristobal, Los Cabos
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