Todos Santos: the town, the coast and how days go here

The drive down from La Paz or up from the cape corridor is mostly cardón and open desert, so the first sight of the town is a surprise: a green shelf of palms below the road, then a brick-and-stucco town on the rise above it. The springs under the mesa are the reason. They fed the sugar cane that built the older buildings in the centro, and they still feed the fields that supply a lot of the menus in town.

Desert above, spring-fed palms below, open Pacific to the west. Almost everything about a day here follows from that.

The historic centre is small enough to cross on foot in a few minutes and dense enough to keep you there for an afternoon. The mission church and the plaza anchor it; the streets around them hold galleries, workshops, small hotels and ordinary daily life — hardware, tortillas, a mechanic, kids on bikes. It is an art town, but it is a working town first, and the two are not in separate districts.

The other thing to understand early: the Pacific here is a presence, not an amenity. There is no promenade and no line of beach clubs. You drive or walk down a sand track, and the ocean is big and unsupervised. That is a large part of why the town has stayed the way it has.

Centro. The historic core on the mesa: the plaza and church, the theatre, the galleries, and most of the town's restaurants and shops. Streets are a rough grid, cobbled and uneven in places, and walkable end to end. Park once and walk.

Las Tunas and the north side. North and west of the centro, on the sandy flats toward the ocean, about ten minutes from the plaza by car. Roads turn to dirt, houses sit in scrub and palms, and the late-afternoon light is remarkable. It is quieter and residential, and you drive to almost everything from here. This is where Casa del Arte is.

Pescadero and the south coast. A separate small town a short drive south, with farms, food and the beaches most visitors have heard of, Cerritos above all. If you want a beach day with somewhere to eat afterwards, this is usually the direction you point the car.

The best way to spend a morning in town is also the least organised: park, get coffee, walk the streets around the plaza and the church, and let the galleries and workshops pull you in. Doors are often open onto courtyards. Some spaces are commercial galleries, some are studios where the person working is the person who made what is on the wall.

For browsing, our current notes are Nomad Chic, Ceres, Casa Todos, Taller and Pronto Muy Pronto. Between them you get textiles, ceramics, furniture and clothing that mostly are not sold anywhere else, and enough conversation to learn where things were made.

The centro rewards a second lap. The street you walked at ten looks entirely different at five, when the light comes in low off the Pacific and the town starts moving again.

Todos Santos punches above its size for food, and the useful question is what kind of evening you want. Everything below is from our own repeat visits — check each place directly, and reserve where you can.

A dinner worth planning the day around: Hierbabuena, Jazamango and Pacifica. Farm-and-garden cooking, outdoor rooms, long tables. These are the reservations to make first.

Good and unfussy: Ta Deo and Casa Todos for a sit-down meal in town without the occasion; El Refugio and DUM when you want interesting cooking in a smaller room.

Tacos and the everyday: Tacos Poblanos, Pueblo Tacos and Compa Chava. This is the food that makes a week here work — a stop after the beach, a late lunch, a cheap dinner that is better than it needs to be.

Drinks and a lighter night: The Green Room and Barracuda Cantina, when the plan is a couple of drinks and somewhere to sit.

One piece of advice: do not try to eat all of these in a short trip. Pick two dinners to build around, keep the rest opportunistic, and leave a night for cooking at the house with what you bought that morning.

A shorter, more personal version of the above: the places we send guests to right now, grouped by the kind of meal, with our own order where we have one.

If you are staying somewhere with a kitchen, the shopping is half the pleasure. Doce Cuarenta is our default morning coffee. Agricole Cooperativa is where we go for produce and local goods. Sol 2 and Los Pinos cover the practical grocery run.

The pattern that works: coffee and a walk first, provisions on the way back, nothing planned until the afternoon cools. Buy fruit and vegetables in smaller quantities and more often — things are seasonal here in a way that rewards a mid-week second trip.

Water, ice and coffee for the house are worth sorting on day one. Everything else can be improvised.

The beaches are not interchangeable. Cerritos, south past Pescadero, is the most set up for a day out: a broad sweep of sand, rentals and instruction in the area, and places to eat near the parking. La Pastora, north of town, is quieter and more exposed. Punta Lobos is the working fishing beach, best late in the afternoon when the pangas come in through the shorebreak. Las Palmas sits behind a palm grove and feels the most secluded. San Pedrito is another surf-facing stretch on the Pescadero side.

Conditions vary by beach and by day. Read the water before you commit to it, every time.

Conditions change beach to beach and day to day. Swimming suitability varies with swell, tide and current, and a beach that is calm one morning can be unsuitable the next. Observe local conditions and any signage, watch what other people are doing before you go in, and treat shorebreak and rip currents seriously. Plenty of days here are better spent on the sand with the water at your ankles.

For sunset, almost anywhere west-facing works, which is most of the coast. Bring more layers than you expect; the wind picks up as the light goes.

Days here organise themselves around light and heat rather than a schedule. Mornings are bright and usable: coffee, town, the beach, anything that involves moving. The middle of the day belongs indoors or in shade. Late afternoon is when the town wakes back up and the coast turns gold. Evening is dinner, and dinner is unhurried.

Three or four days is enough to stop rushing. A week is when the trip changes character — you get a market routine, a coffee place, a beach you keep going back to, and one night when nobody wants to go out at all.

Do not overschedule the day trips. One outing beyond the immediate area — La Paz and Balandra, or El Triunfo and the cactus sanctuary on the road east — is plenty for a short stay.

Casa del Arte is a private four-bedroom compound in Las Tunas, about a ten-minute drive north of the centro: three buildings arranged around gardens, courtyards and a saltwater pool, with art and outdoor living throughout.

Playa Las Tunas is a five-minute walk from the house — a beach for walking and watching the Pacific rather than a swimming beach. Cerritos, about twenty minutes south, is where you go for a day on the sand.