July – August

Beating the Summer Heat

Cabo San Lucas is located in a hot, subtropical desert at the southernmost tip of the Baja Peninsula, where the arid desert meets the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez, where we enjoy over 300 days of sunshine per year with little to no rainfall from November to July.

Here, our temperatures start climbing in May and by mid-June we are well into the hotter weather, with the temperatures remaining high through October.  November is always a wildcard…  there have been times when we woke up Nov 1^st and the temperature had dropped 10 degrees overnight and remained cool for the rest of the month.  Other times we were able to turn off the AC and open our windows at the end of October, only to have an unexpected heatwave arrive mid-November.   

July and August are indeed the hottest months of the year here, with temperatures soaring across the board. The average high temperatures typically range from 34C – 38C (93F – 100F).  July also brings high humidity, which plays a significant role in how the heat feels.  While the thermometer may say 34C (95F) the humidity pushes the “real feel” or heat index up to 47C (116F) making the heat so much more intense. 

This year has been even hotter than usual, not just for us, but for many people around the world. Worldwide, August 2026 was confirmed to be the hottest August on record. 

Here specifically, 2026 brought unusually intense heat and notable heat waves, a severe one during the last half of August pushed our temperatures up to a blistering 40C (104F).

During this time, you can get heat exhaustion just by walking out in the sun for five minutes! 

Our mornings begin warm and mostly dry, then mid-afternoon packs the heaviest humidity before the evening settles down again.  But by evening, our house has already been heated up like a pizza oven!

Below are some things we have done to adapt to living here during the hot summer months….

Air Conditioners
Mexican homes are not climate controlled, no double-paned windows, and no central air.

If you’re doing it right, you’ll move from room to room turning the mini splits on and off as you go through your day, which is exactly what we do.

• In the morning, the bedroom AC is turned off, and our home office AC is turned on.

• At lunch, our home office AC is turned off, and the guest room AC is turned on (we store our patio furniture in our guest room during storm season and have converted the room into a makeshift lunchroom)

• After lunch, the guest room AC is turned off, and our home office AC is turned back on.

• After work, our home office AC is turned off, and the living room AC is turned on.

• About an hour before bed, the bedroom AC is turned on (to give it extra time to cool) and then when it’s time for bed, the living room AC is turned off.

Electricity is expensive by Mexican standards, and therefore the Mexican government heavily subsidizes residential electricity to help everyday families afford basic power.  These public funds are meant for standard use, so the government has implemented a DAC (Domestico de Alto Consumo) limit to remove the subsidy from households with high-energy usage – those running multiple air conditioner 24/7 or heating large swimming pools.  Charging the full unsubsidized cost to high-energy users is meant to encourage people to save electricity and avoid overloading the local power grid.

Each billing cycle, the CFE (the electric company) evaluates your energy use over a rolling 12-month period.  Here in Los Cabos, we have a limit of 10,200 kWh per year.  The moment your rolling average crosses the threshold, your account moves int the DAC rate and you lose the government subsidy.  This means your cost per kWh can jump by 200% to 400%, making the cost extraordinarily high.  PLUS…  you are then stuck in this DAC rate until your rolling 12-month consumption drops back below the regional limit.

Our past 12-month consumption currently totals 7801kWh used or 77% of the limit, and it is our AC that consumes the most kWh. 

Our electric bill is issued bi-monthly.  As you can see below, the kWh used and the cost for Feb/Mar with no AC running, is much lower than the kWh used and cost for Jun/Jul when we were running our AC daily, one room at a time. Could you imagine crossing that DAC limit and having to pay 200% – 400% above that!

Billing Period	kWh used	$MXN	$CAD	$USD
Feb/Mar 2026	784	$2,506	$205	$148
Jun/Jul 2026	1957	$6,207	$507	$366

To help us avoid crossing that dreaded DAC limit, we have implemented a few energy saving things to help: 

• Prior to AC season starting, we arrange for our AC units to be thoroughly cleaned and inspected to make sure they are running properly.  Then during the summer, we make sure to clean the AC air filters every two weeks to keep them running as efficiently as possible.

• In August 2022 we installed four solar panels (500 watts each) on our roof to make use of all this sunshine we have available.  Our solar usage saves us approximately 30% in electricity costs.  Without it, we would certainly be over the DAC limit during the hotter months.

• We set our home office and guest room AC to 26C (79F) and our living room and bedroom AC to 25C (77F).  Research has shown that to save money during the summer, the sweet spot for the AC is 25.5C (78F).  We also change the AC setting to “auto” once it has reached our selected temperature, so it only runs while cooling, saving extra electricity.

Also, to help with the heat it is important to always keep the air moving, as still air is hot and humid air.  The secret weapon – fans, fans and more fans!  Every room in our condo has a ceiling fan that is on 24/7 constantly moving the air, plus we have floor fans in our bedroom and living room that help keep a light breeze directly on us. 

Shopping
One of the most challenging things we have had to adapt to while living here has been grocery shopping when the temperatures are soaring.  In previous years the fresh chicken, bacon and coffee cream we bought often spoiled by the time we arrived home.  Between walking the groceries out of the store, placing them into our hot car, driving 15-20 minutes home, then carrying them up to the third floor, all while the heat index is registering 47C (116F), it’s not surprising many perishables didn’t make it. 

(The heat can also affect things in our pantry – we had an unopened shelf-stable bottle of mayo that went bad within a week of bringing it home due to an extreme heat wave we had last year.  Because of that, even the unopened mayo now lives in our fridge full time).

We plug the cooler into our “cigarette lighter” (do we still call it that? I think it’s now referred to as a “12-volt accessory outlet”) while driving to and from the store and, while inside grocery shopping, we plug it into a portable battery pack to keep it chilled.  This ensures our perishables arrive home as fresh and cold as possible, keeping everything at 3C just like our fridge at home.

To have enough room in the cooler for our perishables, we had to split our grocery shopping over a couple of days.

• We shop at Costco in the late afternoon on Wednesdays, after Lorne has finished work for the day.  We find this time to be less busy plus there are quite a few shady spots to park in (fyi…shady does not mean cooler, it just means the sun is not beating down on the car!).  Our new cooler holds our bulk meats and fresh veggies.

• We shop at Fresko (standard grocery store) after dinner on Friday nights.  The sun is down (again – not any cooler) and the store is less busy.  The cooler then holds our fresh fruits, dairy and frozen items.

This cooler has truly been a lifesaver for us during the extremely hot summer months.  The groceries still need to be carried up to the third floor, but at least they have a fighting chance now of still being cold when they arrive home.

Cooking
Cooking inside during the summer heat is the worst!  Your kitchen gets so hot; you start sweating and it’s just not fun.

We typically like to eat our first and main meal of the day around noon and let me tell you it is just too hot to use the oven or stovetop to cook or even be in the kitchen for more than 20 minutes without feeling like you are dying. 

It should be noted that we do not run the AC in the kitchen/living room area while cooking lunch.  The area is too big to cool for the small amount of time we would use to prepare our food.  Instead, we work quickly, then enjoy our food in the air conditioned “lunchroom” we set up for the summer in the guest room – which is a much smaller room and can cool down very quickly.

To keep the heat out of the kitchen during the hotter months, we cook most of our meals outside using either the BBQ, or the Blackstone grill, and the only appliances used inside are the slow cooker, toaster oven, microwave or the air fryer – things that don’t generate a lot of heat inside.   

We also designate Saturday as our prep day in which we will turn on the AC in the kitchen/living room area, pick a playlist on Spotify and spend the day preparing things for the coming week as well as making various things to freeze so we will have them available later when we need them.  Over the years we have found many ways to prepare ahead to help us minimize the heat and be able to cook our meals quickly.

Slow cooker:
The slow cooker is great for setting and forgetting and letting it just do its thing unattended for hours.  Once a month we will slow cook a pork roast, then slice it and freeze it into portions, then as we need it, we defrost and reheat – ready in 5 minutes!

We also use the slow cooker to prep mashed potatoes.  We throw 5lbs of potatoes into the slow cooker, cover with water, add some salt and simmer on high for about 4 hours.  When they are tender, we drain them, add some butter, cream and seasonings, mash them, then freeze them in portions for later.  To use, we defrost them overnight in the fridge, then add a splash of cream to the top, cover with foil and heat in the toaster oven at 350F for 30 minutes.  When heated through, we simply stir and enjoy mashed potatoes as if we just made them.

We also use the slow cooker to make spaghetti sauce, soups, and a variety of casseroles to freeze, so we only need to defrost and reheat later when we are ready for them.

Instant pot:
We use our instant pot to make rice instead of using the stove and heating the kitchen up.  We make large batches of basmati rice, rice pilaf and Mexican rice that we portion out and freeze for later.  To use the rice, we simply defrost overnight, add a teaspoon or two of water, cover and microwave for 1 – 1 ½ minutes, stir, cover and let steam for a few minutes.  Perfect, fluffy rice every time, with little effort!

Toaster oven:
Every few days we bake potatoes in our toaster oven because precooked potatoes are easy to use in a variety of ways.  We typically cut the potatoes in half, season them, drizzle with a bit of avocado oil and bake them cut-side down at 375F for about 25 minutes.  We then either serve them as a baked potato with a bit of butter and sour cream, or cube them and cook them as chunky potatoes, or shred them for hashbrowns (Denny’s style!).  The pre-baked potatoes can last up to 3-4 days in the fridge, so they are available to use quickly, whichever way we choose to use them.

We also use the toaster oven to roast veggies, cook casseroles and even bake up a small batch of cookies or scones (which are also pre-made and frozen, readily available for when we want them).

Pasta Cooker:
Something new we purchased this year was the Nordic Ware Microwave Pasta Cooker.  This inexpensive little gadget saves us from having to boil pasta on the stove.

Once cooked, you pop the lid on, then turn it upside down into the sink to drain. We then either add the cooked pasta to a sauce or a casserole we are making, or chill the pasta to use in a salad.  This is one of my new favourite kitchen items.

Utilizing Saturdays as our prep day, where we can cook and freeze things to use later, helps us keep our weekday cooking time down so we are only spending max 15-20 minutes in the already hot kitchen preparing our food.

Outings
In a lot of ways our life here is vastly different than it was back home in Canada, however the one thing that hasn’t changed is that Lorne is still working at his 9-5 job. This means we still have a similar routine to what we used to have, where he works during the day, then when he is finished, we make dinner, relax and watch TV in the evening. 

During these hotter months, our outdoor adventures are generally reduced to grocery shopping – in air-conditioned stores.  It’s just too hot to be outside for any length of time.  As mentioned earlier, at these temperatures, you can get heat exhaustion just by walking in the sun for five minutes!

Eating out is also put on the back burner during this time as most restaurants have open outdoor seating (no AC) or they close for August/September in preparation for storm season.

So, for the most part, beating the heat during the hotter months means we are not going out much, but instead sitting in the AC in our home office during the day, then in the evening hanging out in the AC in the living room.

The heat has been something we have had to quickly adapt to while living here.  Prior to moving, we had visited Cabo at various times of the year, so we knew what the heat was like from June – October.  Turns out living here was very different from vacationing here and like I said, we had to quickly learn how to deal with the heat.  Finding ways to keep our costs down, our food fresh and how to cook in the heat were challenging at the beginning, but we soon found some creative ways to deal with it all. 

Where we share some of the little things we’ve been up to…

In our January-February blog, we introduced you to Indy, who is supposed to be either inside her condo or tethered in her yard. Last time she managed to escape, jump into an open ditch (full of water from the water treatment plant), get all wet and then rolled in the sand. Lorne caught up with her near the entrance gate, brought her home, tethered her and messaged her mom to let her know Indy was going to need a bath!

On this night in August, as Lorne was taking out the trash, he noticed Indy laying outside her front door. As soon as she spotted Lorne, she rolled over onto her back clearly indicating she wanted a belly rub. Just as he was about to rub her belly, he noticed she was soaking wet! The ditches have since been filled in, so the only other way she could have gotten this wet was in the community pool. Yup… she snuck out of the house late at night through an open window and went for a swim all by herself. When she was finished swimming, she walked back home and waited at her front door for her mom and dad to let her in. Lorne sent them a message letting them know Indy was out front, but it was after midnight and when they did not respond, he walked Indy around to her backyard and tethered her again so she would be nearby when her parents woke up.

Where we give you a glimpse into what we are doing currently…

Movies / TV Shows
New, new to us, and old favourites that we’ve enjoyed watching this month…

Books
What we’ve been reading on the weekends…

Nope….. Nada….. Didn’t happen!

I’ve noticed a pattern through the years that we have lived here, where we do a lot of reading (multiple books each month) out on the patio from December through June, but we hardly read at all from July through November. In fact, I still haven’t finished the book I started in May.

During these hotter months we don’t spend any time out on the patio and instead we spend our weekend mornings in our home office (in the AC) and typically end up working on our computers rather than sitting down to read.

Food
Tried and true as well as new…

We were out grocery shopping one night and this frozen pizza caught our eye. Frozen pizza is typically not our thing, but this one seemed to called us by name, rather loudly, I might add. It was a Detroit style (my fav) cheese pizza, with a baking pan included to crisp up that focaccia style crust. Even the cashier at the store remarked “wow… that looks good!” We brought her home, added some pepperoni (because, obviously!) and within 30 minutes we had some hot, delicious deep dish pizza and enjoyed every bite!