Playa Los Cerritos: A Guide to Baja's Most Swimmable Beach

Most of the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur is beautiful and almost entirely unswimmable. The shore drops away steeply, the shorebreak lands hard on sand, and the currents run strong enough that locals will tell you to admire the water rather than get into it.

Playa Los Cerritos is the exception. It sits in a shallow bay protected at its southern end by a rocky point, which takes the force out of the swell before it reaches the sand. The bottom is sand rather than rock or reef. The result is a beach where you can genuinely swim, and where the waves that do arrive break gently enough that people learn to surf on them.

That one geographic accident is why Cerritos has the reputation it has, and why a stretch of coast twelve minutes from Todos Santos ended up with hotels, beach clubs and surf schools on it.

Where it is

Playa Los Cerritos is in El Pescadero, a small farming and surfing town in the municipality of La Paz, Baja California Sur. It sits on Highway 19, the road that runs down the Pacific side of the peninsula.

• Todos Santos — 12 minutes north
• Los Cabos International Airport (SJD) — about one hour
• Cabo San Lucas — about one hour south
• La Paz — about an hour and a half north

The turn-off from Highway 19 is signposted, and the last stretch to the sand is a short unpaved road. Any rental car will manage it. You do not need four-wheel drive.

The beach has two halves

This matters more than most guides mention, and it changes where you should stay.

The southern end, closest to the point, is where the surf breaks and where most of the activity is. Surf schools set up here, boards are rented here, and on a good weekend it is busy. The beach club scene is at this end.

The northern end runs away from the point in a long, open stretch of sand that stays quiet almost all the time. The waves are smaller. There are fewer people. It is a five to ten minute walk from the surf.

Neither end is better. They are for different days. But if you are picturing an empty beach, you are picturing the north end, and if you are picturing surfers trading waves, you are picturing the south.

Swimming

Cerritos is swimmable, but it is still the open Pacific and it deserves respect.

Conditions are usually calmest in the morning, before the afternoon wind comes up. The water is warmest from roughly June through October, when many people swim without a wetsuit. Between November and March the water is noticeably cooler and the swell is larger.

Rip currents form here as they do on any beach with surf, most often alongside the point and wherever a channel has cut through a sandbar. The practical advice is the same everywhere: swim where other people are swimming, keep an eye on how far you have drifted along the beach, and if you are pulled out, swim parallel to the shore rather than against the current.

Surfing

The break at Cerritos is a sandy-bottomed right that peels rather than closes out, which is exactly what a beginner needs and what makes intermediate surfers happy on a good day.

June through October brings smaller, mellower waves and warm water. This is the easiest time to learn.

November through March is the most consistent season, with cleaner and larger surf. It can get well overhead. The water is cold enough that most people want a wetsuit.

Lessons and board rentals are available on the beach year round. Our own surf partner, Pescadero Locales Surf School, teaches directly in front of the hotel.

What is there

Cerritos is not a resort strip. It is a handful of small hotels, a few beach clubs and restaurants, some vacation rentals and a lot of open sand. There is no town centre on the beach itself; El Pescadero proper is a few minutes inland, and Todos Santos is where you go for galleries, a wider restaurant scene and groceries.

That scale is the appeal. It is also why the places directly on the sand are small and fill up.

Staying on the beach

There is a real difference between staying on Playa Los Cerritos and staying near it. Properties in El Pescadero or Todos Santos are a five to fifteen minute drive from the sand, which means you drive to the beach, park, and drive back.

Being on the beach changes the shape of a day. You surf before breakfast because the board is by the door. You come up for lunch and go back down. You watch the sunset from where you are standing rather than driving to find it.

The Cerritos Beach Inn has ten rooms directly on the sand at the quiet end of the beach, a pool above the water with a rooftop deck, and The Sunset, our restaurant on the beachfront patio. The busier surf section is a short walk south.