Cabo in November, Worked Backwards From Thanksgiving Thursday
Thanksgiving falls on November 26 this year, and the families who will eat it on a terrace in Pedregal mostly booked in September. A few are still deciding this week. For them, and for anyone planning Cabo in November 2027, this is how our team stages the week. From the first call to the moment the turkey comes out, in the order we actually do it.
We ran this sequence for four houses last November. Three went to plan. One taught us the lesson about the transfer that sits in the T-minus-one section below.
Seven weeks out: the call, and the three questions that pick the house
The first conversation is short. How many people, how many of them under twelve, and does anyone play golf seriously. Those three answers sort the five houses we hold back for the holiday.
A group of eighteen to twenty-two with grandparents goes to Casa Buena Vida, ten bedrooms on the cliff in Pedregal. Its chef is on the rota every day with breakfast or lunch included, and a bartender works ten to five. Its listing sets a five-night minimum for the week of November 22 to 29, which is the holiday minimum you will meet at most of the good houses.
A group that wants the house manager to run everything, from the market to the yacht, goes to Villa La Datcha, also ten bedrooms in Pedregal, with a chef and butler in the house. A smaller family of fourteen that wants to walk to the marina goes to Mar Azul at Hacienda Beach. Seven bedrooms, a chef for breakfast and lunch, a butler on a ten-hour day, and a five-night minimum from October through December this year.
Families with young children who would rather be on the Corridor, twenty-five to thirty minutes from the airport instead of forty-five, go to Villa Las Rocas at Playa El Tule. Seven bedrooms counted as sixteen adults and six children under twelve, five nights over Thanksgiving, a maid every day except Sundays and holidays, and a chef hired for the week on request. And Casa Alcini, eight bedrooms in Pedregal with a guest casita, is the one we quote when the family wants to bring their own cook and only needs the house, the housekeeper and the security.
We send three of the five with the minimums written next to each, not all five. Nobody chooses well from a list of five. Three, yes.
Six weeks out: the contract, the deposit, and what “fully staffed” means on paper
The contract goes out the week after the call. Read the staff schedule before the rate. A house that says chef “daily” may mean breakfast and lunch, as at Mar Azul and Casa Buena Vida. Dinner on the holiday itself is a separate conversation, and we have it now, not on the Tuesday before. Groceries are billed at cost plus a shopping fee at most houses, and the Thanksgiving shop is the largest of the year, so we ask for the fee in writing.
One question we are asked every October: can the minimum be shortened. For the week of the 22nd, no, in our experience. Owners hold the week for seven-night bookings until early November and release five-night gaps after that. Four nights is not a Thanksgiving booking in Los Cabos. Not this year.
Five weeks out: the menu, and the turkey problem
Chefs in Cabo cook Baja, and they cook it well. A whole roast turkey with the trimmings an American family expects is a different job, and it is the one item we confirm five weeks ahead. The bird itself is the issue, not the skill. A twenty-pound turkey is a special order at the supermarkets in San José and Cabo San Lucas in November. Chefs at the Pedregal houses have told us more than once that the week before Thanksgiving the shelves hold eight-pounders and nothing else. So the order goes in by the last week of October, through the house. Every year.
Our menu goes back to the family as two dinners, not one. Thanksgiving Thursday is the turkey, the stuffing, the sweet potatoes, with the chef’s own additions: a tamal, a grilled Pacific fish for the uncle who does not eat turkey, a flan beside the pie. The Friday is Baja, and the family that lets the chef off the leash on the Friday eats better than the one that asks for leftovers. Three nights at a restaurant out of six is the most we recommend; our Los Cabos restaurant guide has the tables that need two months’ notice in high season, and November counts.
Four weeks out: the boat, and why we book the Wednesday
Everyone wants the boat on the Thursday morning before dinner. We book it for the Wednesday. Thursday morning in the kitchen is the chef’s. A house full of people coming back salted and sunburnt at two in the afternoon, with dinner at five, is how a holiday goes wrong. Wednesday gives the whole group a day on the water, a late lunch at the house, and Thursday free.
From Mar Azul the marina is a five-to-eight-minute walk, which is why we put the boat families there. From Pedregal the villa’s driver has you at the dock in ten. Late November is the start of the season when the water is clear enough for the snorkel stop. Humpbacks have begun to arrive by then, most years from the middle of the month, but we do not promise whales before December. A half-day with a captain and a cook aboard is the booking; a full day with twenty-two people is a different boat, and we say which one before anyone pays.
Three weeks out: tee times, and what Cabo in November does for the golfers
Courses on the Corridor fill the holiday mornings by early November, because Cabo in November is the first dry month and every member knows it. We hold two tee times for the group on the Friday and the Saturday, eight o’clock and eight-fifteen, from the house’s membership where it has one, and we release what the family does not use the week before.
Cabo weather in November is the reason the golfers come. Daytime highs settle in the low eighties Fahrenheit, the humidity of September and October is gone, and the mornings are clear enough to see the Sea of Cortez from the back nine. Hurricane season on the Pacific side runs officially to the end of the month. In the seasons we have placed guests here, a storm in the last fortnight of November has not reached the coast, though we watch the forecast from the 10th and we tell the family we are watching. Sea temperature sits at its warmest of the winter, seventy-eight or so. Evenings on the Pedregal cliffs want a sweater by nine.
Two weeks out: the transfer, and the lesson from last year
Every one of the five houses gives an airport time on its listing, and every one of them adds a holiday caveat. Casa Buena Vida: forty to forty-five minutes, closer to an hour at peak arrival times. Villa La Datcha: forty-five to sixty, up to seventy-five in the holiday weeks. Villa Las Rocas: twenty-five to thirty, forty on holidays. We book the villa’s own vehicles, two for a group over fourteen, and we book them for the flight’s scheduled arrival plus the immigration hour.
Last year a family of sixteen landing at San José on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving waited ninety minutes at immigration because three international flights arrived in the same quarter-hour. The drivers waited. The chef held dinner. Nobody minded, because we had told them on the Monday it might happen. Not the delay, that is not the lesson. What we took from it is that we now put the Wednesday arrival in writing as a three-hour window and plan the first dinner as a cold table the chef can hold.
The week before: the house is set, the staff are briefed, the shop is done
By the Friday before, the house has the turkey in its refrigerator and the children’s room has the cribs and the stair gates the family asked for. By then the house manager has the week’s plan on one sheet. Wednesday the boat, Thursday the dinner at five, Friday golf and the Baja dinner, Saturday golf and the restaurant night, Sunday the market in San José with the chef, Monday the transfer. Our piece on what a Pedregal villa stay looks like hour by hour covers the daily rhythm of these houses; this one is only about the holiday week.
We also send the family three things they did not ask for, the same three for every Cabo in November booking. The name of the house manager and the chef, with a photograph of each. A note on tipping, since the staff work the holiday. And the time of sunset on the 26th, which is 5:40 or thereabouts, because the dinner wants to be on the terrace while the light goes.
Thursday, as it runs
Seven o’clock, the chef starts. At Casa Buena Vida the bartender starts at ten. By eleven the family’s football is on the terrace television, which is the real Thanksgiving tradition and the one no Mexican chef has yet objected to. Lunch is light. By design.
By four the table is set outside, by five-thirty the turkey comes out, by six the sun is in the Pacific, and the chef’s tamal is on the table beside the stuffing. A grandmother from Dallas who sat at that table at Casa Buena Vida last November told the house manager it was “the first Thanksgiving in twenty years where I didn’t wash a dish”. That is the service we are selling, and it is the whole piece.
Concierge note. The one house out of four that went off plan last November was the one where the family changed the headcount from fourteen to nineteen ten days before arrival. By then the chef’s shop had been done, the boat was booked for fourteen, and the Friday tee times were four. We rebuilt all of it in forty-eight hours, but two of the five extra guests slept in the casita rather than the main house. Tell us the number by the end of October and it will not happen to you.
“A staffed villa at Thanksgiving is a kitchen with a view. The view is the easy part. We spend October on the kitchen.” — Sabrina Piccinin, founder, Haute Retreats
What families ask us about the holiday week
Is Cabo in November warm enough to swim? Yes. Air in the low eighties, sea around seventy-eight, and the drier air of the season begins by the middle of the month. We still note the Pacific swell on the Pedregal side; pools are the daily swim there, the Corridor beaches such as El Tule are the sea swim.
What is the minimum stay for Thanksgiving in a Los Cabos villa? Five nights at Casa Buena Vida for November 22 to 29, five at Villa Las Rocas over the holiday, five at Mar Azul from October through December. Seven-night requests take priority until early November.
Can the villa chef cook a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner? Yes, with the turkey ordered through the house by the last week of October. We confirm the dinner and the Friday menu five weeks ahead and leave the Friday to the chef.
How early should we book Cabo for Thanksgiving 2027? By mid-September 2027 for a choice of the ten-bedroom houses, in our experience; the five-bedroom gaps appear in early November, which is too late for a turkey.
Tell us the headcount, the ages and the flight, and we will send three houses with their holiday minimums and the chef’s hours beside each. Request a Tailored Selection
The complete list of the Los Cabos villas we represent sits on the destination page, with the Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo houses listed separately.
Angelica Crudo · Haute Retreats — Angelica runs editorial and search for Haute Retreats, the villa agency founded by Sabrina Piccinin, and writes with the team that stages the holiday weeks in Los Cabos each winter. Every house in this piece was checked against its listing on October 6, 2026.
