Back in 2009, I took my first real "out of the country" trip if you don't count a few hours in Tijuana in 1977 with my parents, and elderly relatives Uncle Johnny and Aunt Josephine, whom we were visiting in LA at the time. I remember Mom buying a metal supposedly Mexican made metal fish that was about a foot long, and that the back alleys of Tijuana scared the hell out of me (although possibly not as scary as going to Disneyland, and being terrified of roller coasters, going on the Matterhorn, crushed into the sledcar by my 68 year old Aunt Josephine, because... well, Dad was a heart patient, Mom "had vertigo" (Mom was full of the bullshit variety of vertigo, I suspect), Uncle Johnny was too old, but Aunt Josephine was actually pretty OK during the ride, although as a sullen 16 year old, about the only thing I remember about that ride was she weighed a lot, I was horribly mortified/embarrassed, and they had just added the animatronic Yetis to the Matterhorn to spice it up (I thought they were really lame), and when we got off, fortunately, the park seemed chock full of extremely tan hot SoCal teenage girls wearing the terrycloth rompers that were very popular that year, so I quickly forgot the embarrassment of riding and surviving a roller coaster ride with my sweet elderly Aunt).
So I digress... I went back to Disneyland in October 2008 and finally conquered my fear of coasters (I really don't trust the people that build the things - you know, low bid :p) by prompting boarding the California Screamin' coaster as the 2nd ride in. After you ride that sucker, which uses magnetic induction and throws you from 0 to 55 in 3 1/2 seconds as you hurtle up the first hill, the Matterhorn, which is a gravity ride and never goes above 35 mph, is, well, LAME. At my follow-up trip to D'land with my children (for their first ever visit) in October 2010, my son and I rode the CS coaster 10x. He *loves* coasters and extreme rides (my daughter, OTOH, would not talk to us for two hours after we took her on Space Mountain, although she has since forgiven me).
You didn't need a passport to go to MX in 1977; of course now, you do. In 2009, I got my passport, we went to Cancun, to the Zoetry all-inclusive resort on the Riviera Maya. Its on a lagoon and not really "in" Cancun, its about a 30 minute trip from the airport. I really didn't know what to expect; the fact the resort was in a jungle, and that it seemed like there were police checkpoints every few kilometers and that nearly every resort was guarded by guys with assault rifles kind of made me, well, nervous, but once we got inside it was cool. In fact, we even had a mild Cat 1 hurricane go by in the middle of the night in the middle of the trip. Very little rain (it was a small storm), mostly a lot of wind and waves that threw hundreds of conch shells up on the beach. We had fun sifting through them, and tossing the ones that still had live occupants back in the ocean. I also confess that I felt very guilty taking the trip at the time my mother was undergoing chemo and radiation, but she told us to go and have fun, and that she would be OK. That was my Mom... not really different than a lot of other Moms, I suspect.
So, a year passes, I made a promise to Dawn that if she helped me close out Mom's estate/house - which she did in April 2010 (complete with house haunting - we were sitting in my old room sorting through pictures, and heard a loud persistent knocking on the wall. No one was at the front door, and the wall in question had eaves on the other side. Another evening, after having dinner with my childhood friend Kathy and her husband, we returned after dark, and I had left all of the lights on, including the front porch light - which as I drove up to the house, was off (no real estate agents had been in the house because it wasn't officially on the market yet). As I pulled the rental into the driveway, the light flipped on. Ummm... there had been no problems with the light fixture before. I hope the new owner isn't being plagued with hauntings) that I would take us on a nice vacation. Of course, time passes, kids come for the summer, the "perfect vacation deal" doesn't seem to pop up, so finally, I just decided the hell with it - since we did enjoy the time at Zoetry, we'd go to their resort in Cabo, which is a much smaller boutique hotel with 42 rooms (not that the Cancun is that big either). Zoetry does not cater to noisy parties; they promote wellness, exercise, the menus have calories.
One change we found out - actually, we knew beforehand that Zoetry's owners had sold it to the company that owns the Dreams series of resorts, one of which is next door to the Cabo property - is that at least the Cabo seems to sort of catering more to what I call the "Cheetos party crowd"... its not the same as it was two years ago; for example, they did not permit smoking at the Cancun resort, but at the Cabo one, not in the rooms, but you could in the balconies and pool areas. Um, considering my mother died of self-inflicted lung cancer, and that I hate smoking in general with a passion, this was a bit of a downside to discover when we got there, but that seemed to be the only variation from Cancun. Oh, and the Eurotrash techno music they played at the beach pool - we suspect that is also the influence of Dreams, where the resort basically has an assembly line of tacky weddings and wholesale drunkness going.
Anyway, I had never been to Cabo before, and kind of wanted to check it out because I am mulling retiring to Mexico (or taking my transportation planning skills to another country) because well, of my conviction that the US is clearly heading in a direction of not taking of people once they retire, and well, your dollar goes a lot farther in Mexico. Cabo also has the rep of being much different than the rest of MX, as it is not part of the mainland and has much stronger ties to Southern California than it does MX. My observations during the trip bore this out, except to say that its very much like SoCal except without the traffic, crowding, pollution and general insanity that make LA a place I don't want to live in other than visit (fill in tourist attraction HERE) for a few days at a time.
We took at 6 am flight out of SMF (Sacramento) on 6/10 and changed planes in PHX (Phoenix) on the way to the Cabo airport (SJD)... The Cabo airport is much smaller than Cancun, and the terminal has been recently expanded, which is to say its about the same size as the Des Moines airport was when I was a kid, except they have an immigration area that makes the terminal bigger, but it actually has only 6 departure gates. No jetways - you use stairs to deplane/plane. Like Cancun, you are assaulted by 40 jillion con artists walking into the lobby all claiming they are going to take you to your hotel. Don't listen, you just walk straight through to the outside, and then you try and find your prearranged hotel travel in the mob outside holding signs.
When we went to Cancun, because we booked directly on the Zoetry site, they had a SUV awaiting us. Because I booked Cheap Caribbean this time, it was arranged through Olympus tours, and it took a little bit of searching - I finally just asked one of the other drivers where Olympus was (you don't really need Spanish in Cancun or Cabo, the drivers that work for the travel operators all speak good English, but one difference I immediately noticed in Cabo is that people don't tip like they do in Cancun. And when you tip the driver in Cabo, they are genuinely happy to get it because, well, people don't tip in Cabo for whatever reason), he pointed the coordinator out, and after about 10 minutes, we packed into a Toyota 15 passenger van with about 10 of our closest friends and were the first people dropped off at Zoetry Casa del Mar.
Ok, I'll freely admit I was much more nervous in Cancun and I hate humidity and jungle anyway, but Cabo - its a LOT different, even taking my more calm state of mind into account. Much more laid back, more friendly, less pressure - and I like the desert anyway, and desert with the Sea of Cortez right next to it is even better. Walking into the lobby of Casa del Mar, I liked the whole hotel much better... things were more spread out at this location, and of course, you have mountains in the distance and desert so its a completely different kind of beach than the Caribbean. No bugs (YAY), and the humidity level is perfect - my sinuses never so happy. It was windy when we arrived, not too hot, but what kept striking me was all the distance between the buildings, the pools, just how much more relaxed than Cancun was, where, quite frankly, it reminds me of everything I don't like about Florida (flat, hot, buggy, dirty water, lots of trash on the beaches). The staff certainly didn't seem as cranked up either (both a good and bad thing).
Got shown where the various pools were, and they golf carted us to the room, which wasn't quite as nice as the Cancun facility (HUGE ROOM THERE) but you're not there to hang out in the room, you are there to hang out at the beach. Still, it had a nice walk in shower, a jacuzzi bubble tub, and because things are all-inclusive, you don't worry about food, drink, they'll wash your clothes if you drop 'em off (and impressive turn around time - mine were picked up and back in the room in 2 hours!). We immediately put on our suits, slathered on as much heavy sunblock as our skin could take, and started hitting the pools and the beach.
Both the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific sides - the surf is very rough; there are some portions of the beach that are swimmable, but not a lot. We were close to the tip of the Baha at the points where the SoC ends and the Pacific begins, which meant our beach faced south, and the sun/moon would rise in the East and set behind the mountains in the West every day. Weather was perfect the entire time... it did get hot in the middle of our stay, but for the most part, temps never really got french fry temp, and on our last day (a Thursday) it was very windy again.
There's really not much to discuss about the trip that was exciting, because the point was to relax, and man, did I relax :-p Having healthy menus was interesting; I actually lost weight on this trip and never felt the need to snack... I also hit the hotel dreadmill to run 3x. Now I didn't run on the beach because it was very steep in the wetpacked sand and I did not want to aggravate my left IT band running at a sharp angle. We had breakfast in the main restaurant every morning, and usually had lunch by the pool... dinner was at the beachside restaurant every night except one, where that area was closed for a private wedding... having 3 divorces between us, we were sorely tempted to stand off during the nuptials, during which Dawn was going to scream "Mark (the groom's name) I'm going to have your baby! Marry me!" and then I was going to scream "No, Mark, she's not, but after my sex change operation, you'll just love being my husband!"
Nah. We didn't, and actually, it was a very classy wedding compared to the assembly line weddings going on at Dreams next door (we caught the end of one when we went over there for dinner... and saw the best man wander away half blasted on beer in the middle of the post-wedding photos. I think Dreams really caters to the Cheetos-Walmart crowd, and its scary seeing what wanders around over there. Which is why I will NEVER take a cruise ship vacation)... they had lanterns out, and to our surprise a small fireworks show was set up for after dark. We found that an acceptable tradeoff for eating at Dreams (although we could've had room service bring us dinner), but our curiousity to confirm that it was as tacky as we thought it would be got the best of us. Nothing like trying to eat when most of the people around you are smoking up a storm with their small children there. Ugh.
The seaside dinners were great, though, and we had a full moon every night to watch, sitting on a towel above the high water tide mark. It was beautiful, and just... really nice.
The Hilton, which I'm guessing is about a mile walk down the beach, has created a "swimmable" beach if you don't mind getting knocked down a lot and are strong enough to keep your wits about you so you don't get swept out by a riptide and bashed into the rocks that are under the water (you see them at low tide). We went down there 2x and enjoyed attempting to body surf. I even am rekindling the thought of doing triathlons again because I actually enjoy being in the ocean more than a lake. My contacts like the saltwater, you're more buoyant... and if I can take the attitude that all I'm trying to do is finish perhaps doing triathlons would be fun. I'm confident that I could probably finish an IM if I can become an efficient enough swimmer to make the swim cutoff time. You can rent the Zipps to make it possible to finish the bike ride within the time limit, and I know I can walk a marathon < 6 hours. Its just a matter of putting in the training...
The sun this time of year in Cabo is intense... we broke out the Patagonia sun hoodies the 2nd day to keep from getting toasted during the most intense sun of the day. I was careful, I used sunblock and I tan easily, but I still got a bit burned so after the first hour or so of sun exposure the hoodie went on and stayed on. They're actually quite comfortable in the water and while I had some red spots I didn't look as bad as some of the other guys in our hotel did after a couple of days in the sun.
We took two trips off property... one planned, the other not. We took a cab to the Art District in San Jose del Cabo and explored that area... some really nice art there and worth the trip and cab fare. Then, the afternoon the day before we left, Dawn accidentally knocked her blood monitor meter into a glass of ice that we had it balanced on to keep it cool (and her insulin in the ice) when she was moving the glass to adjust the sun umbrella. It only got dunked for a second, but it was long enough to make the monitor go nuts (it, of course, dried out and worked fine the next day).
Anyway, I got the privilege of visiting Wal-Mart, dropping $40 on a round-trip cab fare, and watching her point and gesture to the non-English speaking pharmacy employee to buy a new meter. She's freaking out about the price, which was in pesos, with a dollar sign marking it as $741 pesos... I didn't have data turned on my iPhone so we had to wait until we got back to the hotel and look up the current exchange rate, which was $63 lol. About $20 cheaper than Sacramento, and no tax paid on the purchase. The lesson learned is next time you go out of country, you take two blood sugar monitors, you put fresh batteries in them and you carry new spare batteries.
And again, the next morning, the damn monitor worked just fine. But now she has two.
I really liked Cabo, though, everything was easy, I didn't see anything being guarded with an assault rifle, and people just seemed friendlier than Cancun. I'm sure it was all in my imagination, and, of course, I did not want to leave... and the grim reality of returning to work is about 8 or so hours away...
There was some fun getting through security screening in Phoenix after customs (which was easy)... no need to post the details, it was just a pain in the ass and they really do need to do a better job of instructing people how and what they want to put in the xray machine - as well as the new body scanners - the one in SF didn't burp on my wallet, the one in PHX did, which meant me getting pulled over and searched more. Just annoying as hell.
Plenty of pictures in my Facebook photo album if you wanna look...
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