Cabo Beach Water Taxis
Cabo Beach Water Taxis
A word of caution when traveling with elderly, small children, and travelers with special needs.
After a perfect day in Cabo our adventure took a scary and almost dangerous turn when trying to return to port via water taxi.
When getting off the ship in Cabo you will first take a tender to the main marina. Once there you will be swarmed with vendors promoting their water taxi service. We chose Penguin Tours and for $15 a person round-trip entered a sturdy, well-maintained, water tax direclty from the marina that took us on a 45 minute tour of the Cabo arch and other highlights and then dropped us off at Medano Beach. Our water taxi driver was knowledgable, safe, friendly, and dropped the ladder for my family to exit the boat safely onto the beach.
So why the warning? When getting off the taxi and starting our beach day we scheduled a return pick up at 12 noon. The water taxi driver informed us that it might not be him but one of their boats would be at the shore at 12 for our pick up and listed the names of the boats if could be. At 12 a boat from Penguin Tours pulled up as scheduled and we tried boarding.
Another vendor who worked on the shore, received a monetary tip from a guest and pushed us out of the way to get them on board first. At that point everyone began pushing and my family got separated. I tried explaining that we had scheduled the 12pm boat and that we needed the ladder lowered but at that point the tide had a strong pull into the ocean and the employees were not listening. Scared, my 70 year old mother tried entering the boat without the ladder and was pulled under the boat. Then my 14 year old went down as well. Luckily, we were able to pull them out from under quickly enough that they did not get trapped but did get bruised and sore. People were yelling to hurry and it was effort to get all 6 of us on board safely.
When I spoke with the tour company directly after arriving back on port they mentioned that that is why they do not recommend elderly and small children taking the water taxi back from the beach. This was never communicated to us and since the boat originally left from a marina we wrongly assumed that there would be a safe option to get back on the boat from the beach.
I am writing this in the hope that someone can learn from our mistake. I will mention that the 45 minute tour we received prior to the beach was worth every penny and more so I woud recommend asking if you can just do the tour and return to the marina if traveling with guests with unique abilities/needs.
