Todos Santos: a guide to the town, the coast and the way 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 Todos Santos 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 centro's older buildings, and they still feed the mango, papaya and vegetable fields that supply half 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 a good deal of ordinary daily life — hardware, tortillas, a mechanic, kids on bikes. Todos Santos is an art town, but it is a working town first, and the two are not separated into different districts.

The other thing to understand early: the Pacific here is a presence, not an amenity. There is no seawall promenade, no line of beach clubs. You drive or walk to the water 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. This is where you go to browse, eat, and get a feel for the place.

Las Tunas and the north side. Below and west of the centro, on the sandy flats toward the ocean. Roads turn to dirt, houses sit in scrub and palms, and the light in the late afternoon is remarkable. It is quieter and more residential; you will drive to almost everything from here.

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.

A practical note on getting around: a car makes the coast, Pescadero and the day trips workable. In the centro itself, park once and walk.

The most rewarding way to spend a morning in town is also the least organised: start with 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, and hours can be informal — if a door is open, that is the invitation.

Design and object browsing is a genuine pleasure here rather than a souvenir errand. Our current notes for that kind of wandering: 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.

Build in a stop for something cold and a sit-down. The centro rewards a second lap — the street you walked at ten in the morning looks entirely different at five, when the light comes in low off the Pacific and the town starts moving again.

Todos Santos punches far above its size for food, and the useful question is not what is best but what kind of evening you want. Everything below is drawn from our own repeat visits — please check each place directly for current details, and reserve where you can.

A proper dinner, worth planning the day around: Hierbabuena, Jazamango and Pacifica are the ones we send people to when the meal is the event. Farm-and-garden cooking, outdoor rooms, long tables. These are the reservations to make first, before the trip firms up.

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

Tacos and the everyday: Tacos Poblanos, Pueblo Tacos and Compa Chava are the ones we come back to. 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 has any right to be.

Drinks and a lighter night: The Green Room and Barracuda Cantina, when the plan is a couple of drinks, something to eat and a place to sit rather than a full dinner.

One structural piece of advice: do not try to eat every one of these in a short trip. Pick two dinners to build around, keep the rest opportunistic, and leave at least one night for cooking at home 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 rather than ranked, with our own go-to 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 and the easiest place to start a day in town. Agricole Cooperativa is where we go for produce, local goods and the general sense of what is growing right now. Sol 2 and Los Pinos cover the practical grocery run.

The pattern that works: coffee and a walk first, provisions on the way back, then 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 second trip mid-week rather than one large shop on arrival.

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

The beaches are the reason many people come, and they are not interchangeable. Cerritos, south past Pescadero, is the most set up for a day out: a broad sweep of sand, surf schools and rentals nearby, and places to eat within walking distance of the parking. La Pastora, north of town, is quieter and more exposed. Punta Lobos is the working fishing beach, best in the late afternoon when the pangas come in through the shorebreak. Las Palmas sits behind a palm grove and feels the most secluded of the group. 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 single time.

The important part: conditions here 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 for swimming the next. Observe local conditions and any signage, watch what other people are actually doing before you go in, and treat shorebreak and rip currents as a serious matter. Plenty of days here are better spent on the sand with the water at your ankles, and that is a perfectly good beach day.

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 golden. 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 where 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. Two makes the whole trip feel like driving.

Casa del Arte is a private four-bedroom compound on the edge of town: several buildings arranged around gardens, courtyards and a saltwater pool, with art and outdoor living throughout.

It is the kind of house that makes the unscheduled half of a Todos Santos trip the best part of it.