Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos

The Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos is a fairly large all-inclusive resort along the beach where the Sea of Cortez slams into San Jose Del Cabo. Yes, I mean slams! The slope into the ocean here creates violent and thunderous waves. Because of the waves, the beach probably isn’t suitable for most people to swim, but don’t worry, there are plenty of pools.

We paid for our two nights with 43,000 Hyatt points which I was able to get with a signup bonus with the Chase World of Hyatt Card, about $5,000 in spending on that card, plus I did have to buy about $50 worth of points to get the last scraps of points necessary to secure the room. They were listing our room for about $600 per night so that means we got somewhere in the vicinity of 3 cents per point on the redemption, and I’m not at all mad about that. Since it was a point redemption, we weren’t able to be too picky about the room, and even though it was for our anniversary, I had to break it to my wife that we couldn’t get a king bed and we were stuck with two queen beds. She looked at me and said “I don’t have to share a bed with you? That sounds amazing!” So yeah, she loves me.

We arrived to the hotel a little disheveled after an experience on the Ruta de Desierto that had Jenn maybe a touch mad at me. When we finally made it to the resort gates and they asked for our names and then escorted us into an office where they offered us a couple of beers while they finished the paperwork. Then a bellhop escorted us to our room while informing us about about every restaurant and bar in the resort, which was very helpful. I was trying very hard to pay close attention to him but I was so distracted by the views of the beach and the enormous pools.

We came to San Jose Del Cabo in January when the temperatures were in the low 60s at night and in the upper 70s during the day with cloudless skies, otherwise known as gorgeous weather. Unfortunately, that’s a little too cool for the pools to stay warm on their own. There was only one heated pool at the Hyatt Ziva, so everyone basically hung out at that pool. This wasn’t really a problem though because the hotel wasn’t crowded and the pool was pretty large.

The room itself was lovely. It was spacious and had a nice balcony overlooking the children’s pool and the Sea of Cortez. It was modern and had a nice walk-in shower and a separate spa tub. It had all of the things you would expect like a small table, desk and a little mini-fridge with some water, beer and soda. Frankly we didn’t spend a ton of time in the room, we definitely spent the majority of our time at the pool, beach and swim-up bar.

Probably my favorite thing about being at an all-inclusive resort is hanging out at the swim up bar. After about an hour at the swim up bar, everyone is your new best friend, you’re doing shots, you’re toasting virtually everything, just generally having a great time. In the span of a couple hours we were having great conversations with a fun couple from British Columbia, a group of folks from Sacramento and a family from Kansas City. The bartender was very accommodating of all of us even though I’m sure we were all pretty annoying to him. We spent the majority of our time at the pool and the hot tub next to the pool. We did have to eat, though.

There is a nice selection of restaurants on site, we ate our two dinners at Hacienda Baja Grill and Bon Vivant. At Bon Vivant, we learned that Tuna is fantastic. Neither one of us had ever tried seared tuna before and Jenn ordered a salad with tuna on it. I was reluctant to try it because it pretty much looked raw, but it was amazing and I’m really looking forward to having it again. This is one of the truly great things about all-inclusive resorts, if we were at a restaurant that we were paying for, we wouldn’t have tried the tuna, but knowing that if we didn’t like it, we could just order something else made it so much easier to try. On our last day for breakfast we went to the buffet expecting to be underwhelmed, but it was seriously good. They had a tremendous spread of fruit, salad, hot breakfast items, bagels, pastries and a whole lot more. I probably would’ve eaten there for every breakfast if I had known it was going to be that good.

Overall, I thought the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos was great. The restaurants that we tried were on par with what I would expect from a higher end all-inclusive resort. I was surprised by the quality of the breakfast buffet. The resort was very clean and well-maintained and the staff was extremely friendly and helpful. The beach wasn’t the best, because of how violent the waves were there, although I actually liked how loud the surf was, it’s weirdly calming to me. The hotel doesn’t own the beach, so there is a definite line where the hotel property ends and where the public beach begins and vendors set up shop right on the other side of that line. The hotel has rows of beach chairs set up on the hotel side of the line, so your view is always partially blocked by the vendors, which didn’t really bother me. You might find that annoying or convenient, depending on whether you are in the market for jewelry or a hat, or whether you just want an unobstructed view of the ocean.

This hotel appears to have gone through the Hyatt point devaluation that just occurred, because this hotel is now going for 25,000 points off peak, 30,000 points normally and 35,000 peak. It also looks like a normal night will run around $500 right now. Considering the quality of the hotel, as well as the food and beverage, that’s probably above what I’m willing to spend, but I’m kind of cheap. In all fairness, people are paying it, and that’s why they can charge that much. Overall, we had a great time and we would definitely return, but I’ll be looking for a deal.