Cabo Resorts Are Offering This Once-In-A-Lifetime Wildlife Experience Right Now

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When you book a fall getaway to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, your itinerary is usually built around a few standard luxury staples: securing a cabana by the resort pool, booking a sunset catamaran tour to the Arch, and finding the absolute best tacos in downtown Cabo San Lucas.

But right now, as we push through September and into October, the beaches of Los Cabos are hosting a completely different, highly exclusive kind of draw. We are currently sitting in the absolute peak of sea turtle hatching season.

When I first participated in a sunset turtle release down on the peninsula, it instantly became one of my absolute favorite memories from all of our trips to Mexico. Looking back at the photos of those tiny hatchlings fighting their way across the sand toward the crashing waves is something that still gives me chills.

It is a profound, deeply emotional wildlife encounter that a luxury infinity pool simply cannot compete with. If you are heading down to Cabo in the coming weeks, here is exactly why you need to drop your dinner plans, head down to the sand, and participate in this once-in-a-lifetime conservation effort.

The Baja Conservation Effort

To understand why this experience is so special, you have to understand the massive ecological operation happening behind the scenes.

Five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles—most notably the Olive Ridley and the critically endangered Leatherback—travel thousands of miles to return to the exact same Baja beaches where they were born to lay their eggs.

However, the natural survival rate for these nests is brutally low. Between natural predators like seagulls and crabs, tidal flooding, and heavy tourist foot traffic on the sand, a massive percentage of these eggs would never hatch on their own.

To combat this, a massive network of local marine biologists and luxury resorts have teamed up to form the Sea Turtle Protection Network. Every single night, local conservationists and resort security teams patrol the beaches on ATVs. When a mother turtle comes ashore to lay her eggs, the teams carefully excavate the nest and relocate the eggs to highly protected, temperature-controlled incubation nurseries located right on the resort grounds.

The Sunset Release Experience

Roughly 45 days after being relocated to the resort nurseries, the eggs begin to hatch. Because these tiny turtles are incredibly vulnerable to the heat and predatory birds, the resorts strictly wait until the sun begins to set before releasing them into the ocean.

This is where the tourists are invited to step in.

Many of the top luxury resorts lining the Tourist Corridor—including properties like Las Ventanas al Paraíso, Casa Dorada, and the Grand Solmar—invite their guests to participate in the final stage of the journey.

Guests are brought down to the waterline just as the sun is dipping below the horizon. You are usually given a hollowed-out coconut shell holding one or two tiny, frantic hatchlings. Under the strict supervision of a marine biologist, you gently tilt the shell and let the turtles touch the sand.

Watching these creatures, which are barely the size of a silver dollar, instinctively orient themselves toward the breaking waves and make their massive, chaotic trek into the open Pacific Ocean is an incredibly powerful experience.

How to Participate Safely

Because these are highly protected, endangered species, participating in a turtle release comes with a very strict set of rules that you must follow to ensure their survival.

• No Bare Hands: You are strictly forbidden from touching the baby turtles with your bare hands. The natural oils, sunscreen, and bacteria on human skin can interfere with their internal tracking systems and cause severe harm.
• No Flash Photography: You are absolutely encouraged to take photos and videos of the release to document the memory, but you must completely disable your camera’s flash. Bright artificial lights confuse the hatchlings and will cause them to crawl away from the ocean.
• Keep Your Distance: Once they are on the sand, give them space. You are acting as a temporary bodyguard against seagulls, but you must let the turtles complete the walk to the water on their own to properly imprint on the beach.

If you are staying at a beachfront resort in Los Cabos right now, walk straight up to the concierge desk and ask if they operate a turtle nursery or if they partner with a local conservation group. Experiencing this tiny, miraculous migration firsthand is the absolute greatest thing you can do in Baja this season.