Kickin’ It in Cabo

November 11^th-13^th, 2014

I flew down from Phoenix to San Jose de Cabo airport, at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.  This region was ravaged by a hurricane just a few months before and some of the damage was still obvious once I hopped on the local bus to head to Cabo San Lucas.  There were corrugated steel roofs half missing, some brick walls of buildings caved in and billboard towers mangled up like some kind of strange cell tower.  The damage wasn’t as prevalent as we neared Cabo as this is more of a tourist area so a bigger effort to clean it up has been happening.  It was an easy walk from the bus stop to the Baja Cactus Hostel.  The friendly manager Emmanuel checked me in and soon I was in the shower cleaning up from the flight.  The guy in the bed next to me, Kieran, was a young university guy who was actually studying at UVIC and was from Cortes Island, which is off of Vancouver Island.  Another dorm mate was a 28 year old German Ayla and the last guy was an Italian who didn’t speak any English.

That evening I headed out down the main drag and found a restaurant that was actually playing some NHL hockey on their big screen so I couldn’t say no although it was a fancy place and I ate somewhere else after the game.  Back at the hostel I met some funny Oregonians, 3 guys and 3 girls who were there for an upcoming wedding.  They had arrived a few days before the ceremony for a bit of a holiday and two of them, brothers, run a bakery in a small town and hadn’t had a real holiday for years so they had been letting loose since they’d arrived in Cabo.  I had a few drinks with them but then later left them to their own devices.

The next day I decided to wander down by the marina and then onto the main beach called Medano.  The sand of the beach was much coarser than what I was used to from Goa and it sloped steeply into the water which was a beautiful dark blue.  There weren’t many people at the start of the beach but soon I reached the busier resorts.  The Americans from the previous night told me about the amazing number of beach sellers hocking their wares which ranged from sunglasses to jewellery to clothing.  They were all wearing white, which must be a government regulation but I was amazed at the sheer quantity of them.  Thankfully they weren’t as persistent and annoying as the beach sellers in India and I wasn’t targeted too much being a single guy with his earbuds in.  I walked a long way down the beach, sat down for a while and watched all the activity.  There was one cruise ship anchored out in the bay with tenders running back and forth.  Many jet skis raced around while others tried their luck at paddle boarding or kayaking.  I ventured back to the main centre of action and sat down on a sunbed for a nice Mojito and a few beers.  It was a nice relaxing afternoon.

The marina:

Nice pirate ship:

On the main beach:

Resorts, resorts, resorts:

All the beach sellers waiting for their prey:

Nice mojito:

This looks wicked...water jet boots...must try this some day:

Back at the hostel I met a bearded Dutch guy named Pol and after a few beers we headed out to find some food.  We ended up eating at a small taquieria which was delicious and tasty, the only drawback was that you had to stand on the sidewalk to eat your dinner.  We grabbed some beers from the ubiquitous Oxxo stores (Mexican competitors against 7-11s) and had a nice evening back on the rooftop of the hostel.  That night another Canadian, in fact another West Coast person joined the room.  Renee is a dive master (or is it dive mistress?) from Port Hardy on Vancouver Island although she had an odd accent.  She claimed that she picked up accents easily and hers was a mix of some Canadian but predominantly from New Zealand where she had lived for four years.  She was just staying one night before heading out on a 150 foot diving boat that was headed to one of the best diving spots in the world where it was possible to see hammerheads, manta rays and whale sharks all in one dive!

The next morning Renee convinced me that I should try to walk along the rocky shoreline towards Cabo’s famous rocky arch.  I was up at 8am and figured it was best to try and beat the heat and get out there.  I walked through town and then along a small beach on the opposite side of the marina inlet where I had been the day before.  Soon I was scrambling over rock, making slow but continuous progress.  I was surprised to see an older man in swim trunks, a muscle shirt and runners coming from the opposite direction.  I stopped to ask him about how far it was possible to make it along the coastline and he stated that he had had to swim around a rocky point just up ahead.  I had my camera with me and wasn’t prepared for entering the water but I pressed on and sure enough got to an impassable point.  Oh well, it was a nice early morning jaunt.

Looking back at Cabo:

The view from the hostel:

On my morning walk:

I think the dog was enjoying his ride:

Many holes in rocks:

Spooky or sexy?!?

Back at the hostel Renee and Ayla were gearing up to go out snorkelling.  I wanted to head out on a boat to see the famous stone arch that is present in almost any tourism photo you see for Cabo San Lucas.  I wanted to do some snorkelling too so we all ventured down to the marina together.  We thought we would have to walk around the marina to the main beach as Kieran had done the previous day but we were approached by a couple of guys asking if we wanted to go out on the water.  After a bit of haggling we hoped on a small covered boat and waited there for a while for the operator as he tried to find a few more passengers, but to no avail.  Renee could see the 150 foot dive boat, the Nautilus Explorer, at the other end of the marina and asked to be dropped off there so that she could go and talk to the captain about the expedition leaving the following day.  That was the last that I saw of her, I hope she had some great diving.

So it was just Ayla and me with our boat driver and we cruised out to check out the arch and around the corner of the peninsula just into the Pacific Ocean from the Baja Gulf.  There were a few beautiful beaches along the way, one called Lover’s Beach and the other called Divorce Beach.  I joked that there must be a “Marriage Beach” somewhere in the middle.  Ayla and I were dropped off on a beach that I had walked to in the morning which was now filled with people including some locals renting out snorkelling gear.  We paid our $5 and headed out into the water.  We needed to swim for twenty minutes to get to the prime spot for viewing fish.  There were numerous schools of fish and some loners like the odd parrotfish (one of my favourites), puffer fish and needle nose ones.  We took our time and continued beyond that spot, making it all the way to Lover’s Beach which probably took us about an hour.  I was hampered by a bit of a faulty fin so I wasn’t moving too quickly.  On the beach, which straddled from the gulf to the ocean there was one British guy standing on the Pacific side with a skim board.  He was monitoring the incoming waves and occasionally made a mad dash down the sand, threw his board into the water and tried to jump on it to catch a wave.  In the twenty minutes we were on the beach, he only attempted about half a dozen attempts, only two of which seemed partially successful.  Seemed like a lot of work for little reward but to each their own.  We finally returned back to the starting  beach, more than two hours later, quite parched and tired but super happy.

The famous arch:

With Ayla in the boat:

Titanic!

If you can make it out, there are 10+ California seals behind me on the rock:

Cabo!

Another good day Wandergliding:

On the walk back to the hostel, we approached a small set of shops in an open air mall by the marina.  Ayla, whose Spanish is pretty decent, approached a couple of guys outside some kind of tour shop with posters of nearby golf courses and timeshare condos.  She wanted to find a universal electrical adaptor.  The guys explained to her in Spanish that Walmart was her best bet.  As we started to walk away, he asked “Can I help you find anything else?”  Alarm bells immediately went off in my head.  I knew what he was insinuating and after India, I wasn’t the least bit interested but Ayla was.  She spoke with them as I continued just 10 meters ahead, around the corner and sat down to wait for her.  I could see her enter the office and sit down and they continued to talk for a few minutes until she opened the door on my side and told me that I should come in.  Hesitantly I did.  The guy began to talk about how he could tell by people’s body language who was interested in this sort of thing, and that the police never bothered them.  He never outright mentioned what he was offering but by spider senses were tingling and I turned to Ayla, told her “Look, you know about my India story, I’m going to wait outside.”  While waiting I decided to find the bathrooms in the little shopping complex.  Returning to where I had left Ayla, I saw the two guys outside of the office, where we had first met them.  “Donde es mi amiga?” I asked as my heart began to race a bit…I probably shouldn’t have left her like I did.  I should have stayed outside the office.  “Banos” one guy replied.   I returned to the washrooms and found Ayla just exiting the ladies.  She looked a bit frazzled.  She told me that she had asked the guy for a bit of marijuana and he had led her to this small closet with a door in the corner of the office and told her to open the door and step inside.  As she did, she felt his hand on her hip and she immediately turned around, said “No gracias” and left.  Thankfully that was all that happened.  My guess is that these guys were sellers of harder drugs like cocaine but who knows.  I think Ayla learned her lesson.

Later that afternoon, David, a Dutch friend of Pol’s who lives in Monterrey came to visit him.  We ventured out for some drinks and dinner on what would be my last night in Cabo, and a good night it would be.  After eating we returned to the hostel where there were five American guys who had arrived by their monster dirt bikes.  A few of them were planning to head all the way down to South America, including riding through the Darien Gap, an unpaved stretch of road (if you can call it that) from Panama into Colombia.  Challenging enough due to the jungle conditions, it used to be more perilous thanks to drug cartels so kidnapping was a possibility but that threat is less these days.   A big group of us hit the town and went to a nightclub that was only partially enclosed and was adorned with big cartoon like cows.  We ended up shutting the place down and stumbling back to the hostel around 2am.  Nice way to finish Cabo.