La Paz, Mexico A funky beach retreat awaits in Baja Sur The eclectic and beautiful capital of Baja Sur, La Paz (pop. 175,000) is at once a major port city and home to ten tranquil beaches along the Sea of Cortés. This is where Mexicans vacation, leaving the honky-tonk Cabos to Americans. La Paz's earlier days were spent as a quiet fishing village, frequently molested by pirates for the iridescent white spheres concealed in the oysters off its coast; John Steinbeck's The Pearl depicted the town as a tiny, unworldly treasure chest glittering with semi-precious orbs.

La Paz's hour of reckoning came in the 1940s, when the oysters sickened and died, wiping out the town's pearl industry. Within two decades, however, restless tourists and developers were scouring the country in search of prime real estate, and soon after the institution of the Baja ferries and the completion of the Transpeninsular Highway in the 1960s, La Paz was rediscovered.

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