Back in the day, there was nothing to do and there was no entertainment in Los Cabos and La Paz. When I moved to Cabo San Lucas in 1984, there were five restaurants and bars and they all had the same menu. We would laugh and say, "Why do they still give us a menu?" There was always fresh fish on it and you could get it grilled, fried, or with "al mojo de ajo" (bathed in garlic). Beef was tough as heck because the meat came from skinny cows that didn't have a lot to eat. The vegetables were always carrots and "chayote", which is like zucchini. When people would say, "What can we bring you, Cathie?" I would say, "Please bring me some broccoli."
Now, there are restaurants everywhere in Los Cabos and La Paz. You can go to a fine dining restaurant and spend US $100 a person easily for dinner in Los Cabos, and this comes with magnificent wine.
You can also go back into the neighborhood and find little hole-in-the-wall restaurants where they have what they call "comida del dia", which means "this is what we're serving today". These small restaurants would have one dish that they do per day and every day the meal is always something different. The meal comes with a little cup of soup and might be some kind of chicken with various vegetables and some rice. It could be some beef or it might be some special enchiladas. They bring you some dessert, which might be a little cup of pudding or Jello. This entire meal would cost about 50 or 60 pesos ($2.60 to 3.20).
When I am in Cabo San Lucas and I have friends who come and stay with me, I like to take them back to the areas I call "where the real people live" and hit these little restaurants because the food is just delicious. It's always somebody's grandma back in the kitchen cooking. You see some little, old lady in the kitchen and she's been cooking all of her life. The food is just great.
You can also go to the big fancy hotels or restaurants. You can run the gamut. It depends on you. At night when the bars are running, you can go to the streets very close to downtown. You don't have to go back into the neighborhood. You can go a block back and hit some of these taco stands. They're cooking the chicken and beef right there and you can get the tacos and beans. They have all different kinds of soda pops that we don't usually drink up here in the States. That's a fun thing to do.
Another thing that they have specialties for is their potatoes. Where in the world do they get these potatoes? I don't know. They are the biggest and fattest potatoes I've ever seen in my life. It's a whole meal when they serve this big potato plate where you could put a whole array of stuff on it. They'll have chopped up beef; the same beef you would get in a taco. You could put melted cheese, mushrooms, onions, and sour cream. It fills the whole plate. It's just a whole gamut of what kind of food you want.
You could also find Chinese and Italian food; but of course, Mexican food is great and there are just dozens of different dishes of Mexican food.
For activities to do at night, my place is in Cabo San Lucas, which is party central. They've got nightclubs down there like the famous night clubs such as the El Squid Roe, Sammy Hagar, and Cabo Wabo. There are a lot of rock n' roll and nightlife places in Cabo San Lucas. You can find a little jazz bar or two stuck here or there.
There's an English radio station, which had a news program on for a year broadcasting English news for three days a week. The local station is Cabo Mil Radio 96.3 FM. They will be broadcasting in Spanish and English to tell you what's going on. The famous newspaper for Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo is the Gringo Gazette. People advertise in there. There are also various English-speaking publications that you can read to find out what's going on around town like concerts and other special events.
San Jose del Cabo is more traditional and calmer. It's a very fun place, too, but it's geared a little bit more for the older people. There are beautiful dining places and places that have live music. Most of the places I know of in San Jose del Cabo that have live music would be restaurants and bars, as opposed to Cabo San Lucas that has actual nightclubs that people go out to and party.
In La Paz, it's more kicked back, too. They have some really nice restaurants with some live music and occasional events that you would see posted. It's still a tradition in Mexico to put posters up on the street poles. In La Paz, they still have wooden street poles and you might see posters with the most interesting stuff by just walking down the street or peeping into store windows. It's like going back in time. You can also find out about the nightlife in La Paz in the newspapers.
A lot of groups have email newsletters that you can subscribe to; like in La Paz, it's the La Paz Gringos. You sign up for it and you get an email every day that tells you everything that's going on that the gringos have posted. That's a really good way to find out what's going on, too.
(Blues singer in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico, pictured.)
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Retirement in Portugal is very good and we have a tremendous amount of new people retiring here. 
are three kinds of mangrove trees found on the property, which you see on the long wooded road to there, the road that never quite leads you to a view of the Pacific, but rather into an intimate place tucked into the nearness of fresh water and salt, land within the reach of sea, a four room structure of masculine sophistication, a boutique inn for surfers and beachcombers alike.
It is situated down the lane from a surf camp and...