Hollywood celebrities like George Clooney, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Charlie Sheen favor the Baja resort called Capella Pedregal partly because it’s off the beaten path. One Dallas mother sent her daughter and a sorority sister there for spring break, warning the resort managers that the girls would be on a budget for the week … of “only $45,000.” Capella hosts at least 20 destination weddings every year; one, for a hedge-fund manager, featured 150 guests, 65 private jets from New York — and a $1 million price tag.
When North Texans think of ultra-luxury resorts on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula, the first property that may come to mind is Las Ventanas al Paraiso, run by Dallas-based Rosewood Hotels & Resorts. Since the summer of 2009, however, that venerable Los Cabos jewel — situated between San Jose Del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas — has had a formidable rival in Capella Hotels and Resorts’ Capella Pedregal, a tony, secluded resort and spa located within walking distance of Cabo San Lucas.
That the relatively new, 24-acre beach resort is both secluded and nearby the bustling tourist town is no coincidence. The only way to reach Capella Pedregal by car is through a privately owned, 1,000-foot-long tunnel that was blasted through the mountain overlooking the Pacific Ocean side of Los Cabos beginning in 1999. The tunnel was an undertaking of Mexico’s Diaz Rivera family, which was eager to capitalize on its oceanfront acreage after developing an exclusive, 360-acre gated residential community called Pedregal (Spanish for “a stony place”) nearby.
Most likely, visitors to Capella Pedregal will be grateful for the family’s ambition.
To design the resort, the family turned to two Dallas-based firms: HKS Inc., which laid the architectural groundwork, and Paul Duesing Partners, which designed the interiors. (Charles McDaniel of The SWA Group, which has an office in Dallas, was the landscape architect.) The property they developed — which includes the 66-room Capella Resort and Spa, plus more than 30 shared- or full-ownership residences — hugs the Baja coast hard by a place called Land’s End, where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez.
An Array of Amenities: Although the coastline here, with its steep drop-off and 8- and 10-foot waves, is not recommended for swimming, Capella Pedregal offers more than enough amenities and activities to compensate. Every room in the hotel, for example, boasts an infinity-edge plunge pool, handcrafted Mexican furnishings, a fireplace, and a private terrace with a spectacular view of the sea. A 12,000-square-foot, Sylvia Sepielli-designed spa offers the last word in wellness and healing.
In addition to tequila tastings and cooking classes, the resort has three distinctive dining establishments offering organic and traditional Mexican dishes. Among the eateries are the signature Don Manuel’s restaurant and a casual venue called El Farallon (Spanish for “a rock that comes out of the ocean”), which serves fresh seafood in an alfresco setting suspended dramatically over the Pacific. Ah, that deep blue sea! Besides championship golf and desert hiking, activities offered outside the resort’s grounds include whale watching, as most of the world’s whale species migrate south to the warm waters off Los Cabos to birth and rear their young each November through March.
To say that you’re pampered at Capella Pedregal would be an understatement. That was clear from the start of a recent visit, when a staff member clad in traditional Mexican garb offered a tray of margaritas the moment our party hit the property. Each guest is assigned a “personal assistant,” who arranges for the likes of pharmacy services, or flowers in your room. At the resort’s largest swimming pool — there are a total of 138! — attendants scurry to adjust your umbrella as the sun creeps across the perfect cloudless sky.
And it’s all done with characteristic Mexican warmth and hospitality. According to Peter Bowling, Capella Pedregal’s general manager, he and other executives interviewed no fewer than 1,000 applicants to hire their first 220 employees (there are 350 now). As a result of that careful scrutiny, Bowling claims, staff turnover at the resort is just 5 percent annually, “the lowest of any hotel in Mexico.”
Healing Powers at the Spa: The warm, hospitable quality is evident throughout Capella Pedregal. You can see it in Carlos Jaramillo, the amiable personal trainer who runs the cutting-edge fitness center. In Fernando Flores, the gracious Guadalajara native who manages the food and beverage operation. In executive chef Marco Bustamante, who personally teaches classes in making a killer shrimp ceviche (don’t forget the serrano chile peppers). And in spa director Vanessa Infante, whose spacious Auriga facility is considered the resort’s centerpiece.
For good reason. Library-quiet, dimly lit, and perfumed with natural herbs, the spa quickly envelops you in a cocoon of New Age-y good feeling. That’s not just water you’re offered, for instance, but a pitcher of light-green chlorophyll water (“oxygenated sunshine,” don’t you know). Guests begin their sessions with a gentle foot massage, then choose from several treatments reflecting “the varying energies of the lunar cycle.”
There’s also something offered called the Art of Sound Therapy. For it, the spa attendant sounds five different chimes, and the guest is instructed to select one of the five. Whichever is picked, the attendant explains, represents “the chakra that needs to be worked on.” One member of our party chose “E,” the lowest-sounding chime, and was told that meant his solar plexus needed work, in order to enhance his purity and love.
Guests may also arrange for a private consultation with Auriga’s “spa guardian,” Josefina Uribe, a 66-year-old curandera, or folk healer, from the Mexican state of Jalisco. Josefina, who creates special tonics from local herbs and uses them with traditional massage, said she became a curandera at the age of 15, when she healed an infant who was about to die. So how does she help guests at Capella Pedregal, who may be spiritually impoverished but presumably not financially so?
“Many people have lots of money. Even if they have money, in their heart they are looking for spiritual help. That’s why they come here,” Josefina says in Spanish. “I ask for help to the moon, the ocean, to nature, and also with herbs, to take away the bad energy, the feelings of sadness, the things that money can’t help. That combination helps people start a new path.”
You’ll need money, and good amounts of it, to start your path to Baja’s Capella Pedregal, however. After all, bumping into the actor Ice T and his pet bulldog — as we did one morning during our visit — doesn’t come cheap. Capella’s rooms, suites, casitas, and villas range from $525 to $4,000 a day during two weeks in January and from May through September. Daily rates hit their peak in December, ranging between $1,100 and $6,500.
How to Get There: Fly direct on American Airlines to Los Cabos International Airport. Then it’s a $120 ride from the airport to Capella Pedregal.
This trip was provided by Capella Pedregal.
