Hotel El Ganzo

Twenty minutes up the coast from the boozier, cruisier Cabo is the laid-back colonial beach town of San José del Cabo, home to El Ganzo. It’s an urbane adults-only hotel, and the crowd here, expectedly, is a little more grown-up. Not grown-old, mind you — El Ganzo’s celebrity-drawing rooftop vodka bar and pool parties see to that — but wise enough to know that a big night is considerably more enjoyable when you’ve got a cloud-like bed in a cool, quiet room to return to.

And it’s no rustic thatch-roofed casita either, that cool, quiet room. With its polished concrete floors, its rolling barn-style doors, its glass-walled shower on full view of the bed, and its airy, loft-style layout, it looks more like something you’d expect in downtown Manhattan. Which makes sense, come to think of it, for a pampered bohemian crowd that probably does a fair bit of its pool-partying on sky-scraping hotel rooftops in downtown Manhattan. Here the rooms’ oversized windows face a marina on the Sea of Cortez, where El Ganzo’s boat shuttles guests to a palm-shaded cove with a private beach club.

How many hotels can tout their resident artist and musician programs, with rotating exhibitions and an on-site recording studio, and also their proximity to an 18-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman? It’s an unusual combination, a fusion of San José del Cabo’s artist-and-expat spirit with the resort-style pleasures of Mexico’s Pacific coast.

For all there is to do off-campus and in the hotel’s own humming social spaces, El Ganzo has just as many quiet nooks. Shaded daybeds and hammocks line the hotel’s decks, while the best rooms come with their own terraces and outdoor jacuzzis — that’s the kind of exclusivity we can get behind.

Please note: Hotel El Ganzo can only accommodate guests over the age of 18.

How to get there: Hotel El Ganzo is conveniently located 25 minutes from Los Cabos International Airport. Private transportation can be arranged at an additional cost.