This Week at TravelGolf.com: April 24, 2008

Golf in Cabo: It's for more than just spoiled millionaire NFL quarterbacks

Eli Manning deserves your respect. Not for something as pedestrian as leading the New York Giants to one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history. Or doing with aw-shucks nonchalance what it took his older brother Peyton years of seething intensity and burning disappointment to accomplish.

No, Eli merits admiration because he chose Cabo as the site for his wedding last Saturday. Now, that's showing real knowledge.

Regular travelers on the West Coast adore this Mexican resort getaway, but as you move farther east ignorance reigns about the true extent of Cabo's wonders. Recently a friend from New York asked in earnestness why he should go to Cabo with the Riviera Maya - a luxury offshoot of Cancun - so much closer.

Which is like asking why you should get to a Major League Baseball game if there's Double A ball in your town. No offense to the Riviera Maya - which boasts some fine resorts like Iberostar Paraiso Maya and an extremely underrated P.B. Dye course, Playa Paraiso - but comparing it to Cabo is akin to comparing Urbana-Champaign, Ill. to Chicago.

You can really like the Riviera Maya. But you'll never forget Cabo.

It's completely different from any other spot in Mexico. Cabo is a 19-mile seaside corridor between the town everyone hears about and often mistakes as the only Cabo (tourist party central Cabo San Lucas), and the more authentic town of San Jose del Cabo. Anyone over the age of 25 with an IQ higher than a Will Ferrell movie character will enjoy San Jose del Cabo more.

There's a reason Cabo's becoming the vacation destination of NFL quarterbacks. It doesn't matter if you're a Super Bowl MVP or an overrated Cowboys celebrity who cannot win a single playoff game (see Tony Romo's infamous trip with Jessica Simpson), the preferred getaway is one and the same.

You don't have to have NFL QB money and stay at the One & Only Palmilla (where standard rooms start at $650 a night) like Eli and his new bride to enjoy Cabo, however. There are excellent everyman resorts like Sheraton Hacienda Del Mar and Westin Los Cabos that will make you forget anything you know about staying at those chains in the U.S.

Eli, Peyton and their crew reportedly played all 27 Jack Nicklaus-designed holes at Palmilla Golf Club one day. You can one-up them by playing the even better Cabo del Sol Ocean Course, also by Nicklaus, or the tough Robert Trent Jones Jr. Cabo Real.

Who said NFL QBs are smarter than you? Not in Cabo.

As always, TravelGolf.com welcomes your comments.

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Call it a guilty pleasure or a web phenomenon, but the "Stuff White People Like" blog is such a hit that it's spawning spinoffs left and right, giving people a chance to poke fun at themselves. Never one to eschew a perfectly good bandwagon, TravelGolf.com's Jennifer Mario presents "Stuff Golf Women (White or Otherwise) Like."

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