As usual, sleeping was largely an optional exercise, We did wake up in time to see the sunrise from our patio. It wasn’t a full horizon sunrise but the clouds all lit up fora bit and it was fantastic to see in any case. We hung in bed for a bit then dressed and went for a walk.Yulia had an experience with the cat this morning where it was following us around the garden and she was stopping to pet it, and it continued to meow and chase us until it was distracted by birds over in a cactus. It’s a good cat, we are sure it is protecting us all from rats and evil spirits.
After a walk and some coffee at the breakfast buffet, we met with everyone and caught an Uber over to Cabo San Lucas. It =was a 40 minute drive, and with 6 of us we ordered an Uber XL, but in reality it was more of an Women’s medium. We were packed in for the drive. It seemed smaller than the ride last night, but since the car was the same kind it was assumed we were all swollen with mezcal still.
On the ride over from the hotel to Cabo but we could really see the heavy construction that’s going on.Along the way, we passed the hotel that Yulia stayed at last time. It was about halfway between our hotel and downtown Cabo. It’s obvious that a lot of money has rolled into the area and there’s lot of construction in downtown Cabo. We can start to see familiar buildings. Once we could get a view of the harbor closer we got down to the harbor the more familiar became and really it’s kinda like seeing Cabo encased in a layer of new construction, but you still have the fun funky, dirty, downtown core – sort of the pit of the peach of Cabo.
We found chairs in the sand down next to The Office. We’re actually at Milky Beach – which Sasha had recommended before and Yulia had been with her girls as well so it was nice. It’s loud, noisy and crazy vendors are pinging us but every two seconds for the same thing over and over but I’m not sure whether my bald head really needs a braid or whether Yulia needs a sash that says “boss bitch” but if we do, we can get a great price. Our brunch consisted largely of a bucket of beers, cocktails and two big bowls of guacamole, We found the place we were eating at had a deal with some of the glass bottom boat vendors, and they got us a boat to take us out to the Arch.
It was a great run out, and we saw sea lions, pelicans, and lots of other tourists. The Capitan of our skiff got us in close for views of the arch, both from the Pacific side, as well as the sea of Cortez. He gave us the standard tour talk that one side of the beach is love beach, and the other side of the beach is divorce beach because only one person comes back. As such we skipped the beaches all together. Mostly because it was just so crowded out there. But honestly, I found people really don’t appreciate how difficult the ocean is until you’ve been out into it, you really do need to be careful in these waves. I’ve seen people stand with their backs to the ocean and get flattened by an unexpected wave. That same wave will pull you right out if you aren’t careful. That’s why our beach has the black flag flying now – it ain’t Pirates, it’s the damn waves.
The amount of new construction around Cabo is huge. They have entire places built up that we never saw when we were here before. Originally The Office stood out as the place that was the end of the road in Cabo, and it has been completely swallowed by a million clone restaurant with umbrellas, chairs, and vendors stretching as far as the eye can see. It’s very nice but it’s not quite Cabo anymore. Or maybe it wasn’t really Cabo before and this is it’s final form. Hard to tell. We took a walk down the beach and just take a look and see what we can see. Most of it is tourists and people selling things to tourists, but then again we fall into one of those groups.
We made our way around to the marina. We could see all the new construction and how full the city is now. It was a longer walk all the way around the marina down to where the actual restaurants were that we wanted to visit, I recognize a few that we’ve been to before, but everything is changed because it’s been well over a decade. We finally settled down on a nice little Taco and Beer restaurant called “Tacos and Beer” – that has a deck that overhangs the marina. It gave us perfect views of the boats, sea lions, and pelicans that were coming across the area. Donny thought it was a fantastic idea to pay money for a musician to come play for us – and now every single street urchin and seller and came to our table and decided that we were the marks for buying more items too.
I will be of course murdering Donny later tonight.
We left our dinner after having several great drinks, and also some really terrible wine that I swear was some form of Organic Estate Grown Windex. The tacos, which were of various excellent meats, spices and wraps – all of which were nearly too spicy for Yulia, because it seems like they snuck habanero into anything random. From there we walked up the marina and found the old shopping center where I had purchased years ago really excellent Oaxacan shirt and huaraches. It had also grown and had some cool looking restaurants/clubs on the upper floors. We walked along the street after a quick false alarm for getting to Uber, then a cancel of that – a tequila tasting, and we found an excellent tourist chops/drugstore right across from the Hard Rock Café, which in turn is across from the old Hard Rock Café, which still has a very cool Cadillac hanging out of the side of the building.
Once we had a significant weight of souvenirs purchased, we hit the Uber button for real and went back to the Resort.
We swam as soon as we got back – it’s still the smartest way to cool off. We’ve been really lucky since its not too hot out, and we are apparently just missing the winter rain, which should start next week. We hung in the pool until the bar closed there – then changed and went to the Seafood restaurant by the beach. We waited for literally over an hour for a table, and since we were a large group got a table in the back of the deck, closer to the kitchen. It was still a great view out, and we ordered all their appetizers (we learned our lesson to just get everything.) The food was great – lots of shrimp and scallops, Surf and Turf had amazing steak. Only real downside was that the wines are pretty universally terrible. We didn’t want to pay for the “High End” wines since those also looked pretty meh. But it didn’t really matter. We had a lot of fun, sang Happy Birthday to Donny yet again, and called it a night.
Cognitive Dissonance 