Jen and I went to Cabo for Christmas.
Day 1 – Arrival at hotel (Riu Palace – Cabo San Lucas). We were treated to a drink from the hotel lobby bar (literally a little booth with a Mexican and some pitchers of drink), the first of many. The guy who checked us in mentioned something about dinner reservations for Christmas and we nodded and finished our drinks. He waved the bar lady over and she brought us more drinks. We dumped our stuff in our very damp smelling room complete with towel formed into swan, bar in room, and two double beds attached by one giant headboard. Hungry, we set off to find supper and then realized with the desk man had been talking about. Mexicans celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve and dinner tonight was by reservation – which we didn’t have. Oh well – they seemed to be used to useless tourists so they squeezed us in and we had a VERY nice Christmas dinner complete with all kinds of meats, sushi, seafood and lots of desserts. I imagine there were vegetables too. We made friends with some nice ladies sitting next to us and they guarded our stuff while we filled our plates. Again and again. At some point I think I must have lapsed into food coma because I do not remember the rest of this day.
Day 2. Christmas Day. We had ordered breakfast to be delivered in the morning. It never came and when I called to complain they said that we had forgotten to indicate a delivery time and I said that was ridiculous, but it was actually true as evidenced by the photo I had taken of the sheet. So instead we wandered down for breakfast. Thus began an entire day of wandering from restaurant to bar to restaurant to bar to eat and drink continually all day.
Day 3. Boxing Day. In the morning I got up before 7 to stand in a line to get a reservation for a fancy restaurant. For some reason we were bored of being in the same place for 24 hours (the first sign that an all inclusive vacation may not become a pattern for us) so we decided to take a taxi into town and walk around and be tourists. I don’t know if we looked poor or something, but the doorman suggested with take public transit instead of a taxi ($10!). Under normal circumstances I think it would have been fun to take the bus. Some of our best Bahamian experiences were on the bus – like the time the guy with the billy club got on and we were sure we were about to become the newest statistic. However, because I had made us a fancy dinner reso for 6 PM we thought we were pressed for time. Round trip the entire adventure took less than 2.5 hours when all was said and done. The town of Cabo is SMALL. We wandered around, some other tourists took a photo of us in the belly of the whale and they pretended to steal our camera and I was a bit relieved because we need an excuse to get a new one, but the they gave it back. We hit the little shops, and also the mall. We had better luck with shopping with the vendors on the beach, where we were able to obtain some Mexican Coach sun glasses for Jen! We decided we should head back to the resort where we could sit by the pool and absorb all the sun possible. Never ones to do the same thing twice, we decided a WATER TAXI would be an exciting way to get back to the resort, even after the water taxi driver tried to talk us out of it because the cost was twice the normal taxi and also the water was quite choppy. No way – I wanted the water taxi. We didn’t wear life jackets and Jen held on white knuckled all of the way back. We were still quite a ways from shore when we realized there was no dock, and the driver shouted, “I will get close and then you have to jump out of the boat.” I immediately thought this was a bad idea since Jen can’t swim. Also – it sounded dangerous. No worry, we were able to get close enough that I only got wet up to my knees. Anyway. We made it back in plenty of time for our fancy dinner. I had a steak that had a half inch slab of cold butter on it. It was interesting – and delicious. I am pretty sure any time you take meat and add more fat you will end up at delicious.
Day 4. The long journey home. We didn’t have to leave the hotel until 1:30 so we had a good chunk of the day to mill about. Jen had prepaid our way to and from the Airport before we left Canada which was nice because it was so damn convenient. We were subjected to what I assume was more stringent screening guidelines at the airport since someone tried to blow up an airplane with his panties on Christmas Day. This more stringent screening consisted of a twelve year old Mexican rifling through my shoulder bag before sending me on my way with an adios. I was hungry as usual, but the Pizza at the airport was 90 pesos a piece – which roughly translates to $9. I LOVE pizza, but even I cannot hand over that much for pizza. Then… the tv on the airplanes was not on for the entire time we were over the US due to new regulations imposed by the big bully US. And that pretty much wraps up the Mexican Christmas of 2009.