Santa Maria Beach, Baja California, Mexico

5KellyRemington 5:00 PM Jun 18, 2022

Santa Maria is great for snorkeling and swimming
This was by far our favorite beach between Santa Maria and Chileno (we still enjoyed Chileno and it's worth visiting). The beach was not crowded (weekday) and was very clean with gentlemen collecting garbage out of the sand throughout the day with their homemade sand scoopers. The sand was coarse so I do suggest wearing water shoes to walk around the beach or in the water. Also we ended up setting up shop all the way to the right side of the beach where the snorkeling is best. It's a bit of a hike in the sand with all your gear but if you plan on doing lots of Snorkeling i do recommend heading to the far right. The snorkeling was great, we got to see a great variety of fish, large schools of fish....starfish, loads of sea urchins (large spine and short spined), puffer fish, yellow tailed tangs, parrot fish, angel fish, and several other types. You can also rent chairs, umbrella and boogie boards, but they won't set it up of bring it for you if you choose to go far away from their post. We did lug all our items to the far right side and came back for the rented items. Bathrooms were not super clean and didn't have toilet paper so I suggest you bring some and don't forget your shoes for the boardwalk. There is no food there so bring lots of water, snacks and lunch in a cooler bag. We had our 2.5 year old toddler with us, and she loved going to that beach. The water also seemed warmer than Chileno beach. The waves were less aggressive and she enjoyed playing in the surf a lot more. We brought buckets and shovels and a light coloured umbrella for entertainment. I do suggest hat and rashguard (uv shirt) as some of us got bad sunburns from snorkeling. We brought our masks and snorkels (no fines as we forgot them) and it was great.

4Ang L 5:00 PM Nov 10, 2020

Great snorkeling, can be crowded
Very nice protected cove for swimming and snorkeling. The beaches all had yellow flags during the days we were visiting but Santa Maria was quite calm, especially at the far west end. Getting in/out where small waves were breaking was a little challenging but not too bad. The water in mid-October was beautifully warm. Only catch is if you don't like crowds/noise, you should get there really early and/or don't go on a weekend. The tour boats from Cabo bring tons of people and blast music. At one point there were eight boats in the small cove. We went on both a weekday and a weekend. On Thursday the boats started arriving around 11:00, but on Saturday was more like 9:30-10:00.