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Cabo San Lucas Trip

30 September, 2005 (20:55) | Diving

Jessica and I spent Sept. 24th → 30th in Cabo San Lucas, BCS, Mexico. We had 4 dives over 2 days in addition to two days of snorkeling. We got to enjoy some very warm (≥ 80° F) water. During our first two dives we didn’t wear wet suits at all! During the second two dives we wore wet suits simply to protect from scrapes and jelly fish. The visibility was amazing, reaching 80 - 90 ft!

Day 1: Saturday

We woke up to the horrid sound of my alarm clock demanding we notice it was 6:30 AM. Our flight leaves at 10:00 AM, but TSA and such is a bitch so we have to get there early. Eventually, we got out of bed and cleaned off. We finished packing and double-checked everything before Ash (Jessica’s sister) showed up around 7:30 AM to drive us to the airport. The ride out was … interesting. Ash had an accident with her car a few (months?) ago and the rear driver’s side wheel well is bent in. Since she’s adding about 450 lbs to what she normally carries, the car will ride differently — the tire scrapes around every corner! I was pretty sure that each turn would be our last and the tire would blow out. It was mangled to begin with and I think we reduced it’s life by at least 3 months.

You’re supposed to give the TSA ninnys a good two hours to search through your luggage and wait in line. We walked straight to the metal detectors, put bags up, removed shoes, and heard the man behind the x-ray machine yell “BAGGAGE CHECK!” as each of our bags went through. My TSA crony was very kind and found the offending items pretty quickly. He gave them a funny look and I said “SCUBA weights”. The light went off in his head as he realized why the bag was (38 lbs) so heavy! He nicely packed stuff back in, trying to minimize invasiveness and wished me a nice trip. I turned around to see that Jess’ crony had totally torn everything apart and left her to put it back together. You win some, you lose some.

The flight down was uneventful, unlike finding Kurt & Marla. There are three terminals at Los Cabos — they were waiting at Terminal 1 and we were delivered to Terminal 3. Once they found us it was fine and we drove back to the condo. We unloaded our gear and puttered around for a few minutes while consuming tortilla chips and home made salsa & guacamole. After a few minutes I was anxious to get wet and Jess was anxious to chill out. Kurt and I went snorkeling while Jess & Marla hung around the condo to chat.

We went to Chileño and had a blast. The water was warm and pretty clear when we got in. I had no problem free diving around 15 - 20 ft. (the max depth). There were a lot of fish out, each with it’s own obvious personality and territory.

We saw paloma pompano, fat beasts that love to swim straight at you with maximum speed. They looked tasty. According to my book they’re quite tasty. We saw a few larger gafftopsail pompano that were quite shy. I think I saw some large Cortez angelfish and King angelfish. There were schools of Cortez rainbow wrasses. These fish were the most aggressive and I was able to poke a few of the sloppier fish while they tried to clean me. They shouldn’t let me do that. There was also one or two fat bumphead parrotfish. They were quite large so it’s luckily there were only a few. I got to chase a large secondary phase male blue chin parrotfish. It was quite lovely and let me follow it around for a while. There were some very large yellowtail surgeonfish — easily 11“ long. There were at least 6 feeding on the algae growing on the rocks. There were some smaller spotted puffers hiding down in the rocks with their cousins, the juvenile/female spotted trunkfish.

By the time we got back famine had passed to all concerned. Because it’s just ungodly hot and humid, driving to the marina beat walking hands down. Apparently Italian food is the big name in attracting tourists. Well, we’re tourists, so Italian it is! We had a small pizza as an appetizer at La Trattoriaand everybody had pasta for dinner. I had the Lobster Ravioli with shrimp sauce. Great flavor in the sauce but it was too rich. After dinner we split up, again! The boys headed out to get a fish ID book and drop by the dive shop while the girls tried to do some shopping. Luckily Kurt and I found the girls just as they were getting into the car, so we managed to get a ride back. Not bad for our first day!

Day 2: Sunday

Awoke this morning to much stiffness and grump. Since the room has two single beds and one fold-out couch you can guess where Jess and I slept. The divide between the two halves of the cushion is quite stiff and bumpy. It hits right about the small of my back, or my hips. We left the AC on full-blast over the night and probably ended up tensing all night long. Kurt & Marla made us breakfast of chorizo and eggs with tortillas, beans, guacamole and salsa. After we’d finished Kurt, Jess, and myself headed out for more snorkeling.

We went back to Chileño and saw a lot of the same fish. The water was beautiful aqua or slightly deeper blue. That’s a good sign. The water is light aqua when there’s particulate matter floating around in it. Particulate matter means reduced visibility. The surge was back the surface was pretty choppy. Jess and I headed out to a large rock outcropping and found more fish than we did last time. Each time I would dive down the Cortez rainbow wrasses would try to clean me off. They’re cleaner fish. It’s cute. Jess liked it. I found a few of the secondary phase male cortez rainbow wrasses, too! There were also some finescale triggerfish that were hard to chase down.

Everybody came back and showered, then split up to go hit up the town. Jess and I didn’t make it very far before deciding we needed hats. We found some nice straw hats and headed back to the mall for a snack. There’s a Häagendazs store in the mall where they’ve got cones and such! Awesome! $7 per scoop! Ouch! We wandered through the mall for a while and decided to get back in the condo for a nap. After an unspecified number of winks, Jess and I headed out to find another snack. Angy’s is just up the hill and wonderful. Marla recommended the chile rilleños but Angy was out. We opted for beef tacos and some soccer on the TV. Because Angy’s is up on the hill there was a nice breeze flying through the place the whole time. Since it’s just up the hill from the beach I expect she gets decent business on two fronts: people heading up from the beach and people leaving the resorts.

We made it back to the condo to find Kurt & Marla awake and chatty. We did some reading then headed out for some groceries and to get directions to Cabo Pulmo. Crashing was the only item on the menu after that final excursion.

Day 3: Monday

Awoke bright and early (well before the sun, actually) packed up and headed out to Cabo Pulmo. The drive out was pretty long and the last 6 miles are on a washboard road. I’d already made reservations with the Cabo Pulmo Resort and they were expecting us. We made it there 5 minutes ’til nine — on schedule. We unloaded our gear, paid for the dives and waited for the rest of the passengers to show up. There were two other couples with us and they were generally pleasant people. You can read the dive reports for El Bajo and El Cantil separately.

After rinsing off and packing everything back in to the car we sped off back to Cabo San Lucas. Ahhh, civilization. We showered and headed back up to Angy’s for lunch / dinner. I had the carne asada, which was excellent. Jess & Marla had enchiladas mole con pollo (read: chicken enchiladas with chocolate on top). That left us at about 4:00 PM with all concerned ready for a nap and some relaxation. I spent time writing up the dive reports and, obviously this post.

After naps and reading we headed out to Johnny Rocket’s for dessert. We had some fun trying to get the order across and thought we’d end up with a million different items. We ended up with, correctly: 1 BLT, 1 banana split (w/o chocolate: they were out), 1 chili cheese fries, 1 chocolate shake / 3.

Day 4: Tuesday

Awoke this morning after a very restful night of sleep to see sun light coming in through the window. What a difference from the night prior. We headed out in decent weather to find breakfast and visit the dive shop. We visited Señor Sweets again for breakfast. Marla and I had waffles, which were excellent. Jess had French Toast which was covered with granulated (vs. powdered) sugar. Kurt had some of the densest pancakes of his life and called it a day with only 1/3rd consumed.

By the time we left the restaurant the heat was rising quickly to the high 80’s or low 90’s. We made a left and swung around the marina to Blue Adventures. It looks like a nice enough place (the compressor looked quite clean). The owner instructed us to show up at the shop with our gear tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM. Since this place is run by an American I’m hopeful for an interesting boat (vs. a panga) but I’m not hoping for too much. Marla pointed out that Cabo San Lucas marina is the most expensive in the western hemisphere (or similar). There are a handful of glass bottom boats — the rest are LARGE yachts.

Leaving the dive shop we came all the way around the marina to look for a particular arts & crafts store. We did quite a bit of walking while the temperature ratcheted up into the 90’s and the humidity soared into the 80’s. I thought I’d collapse from the heat. On the way back to the car we stopped by Tattooine. Jessica and I found some nice vases for a steal ($11 & $17). We also stopped by La Europa, a deli. We got some various salami, cheese, etc. for lunch. At the register the guy bagging our groceries folded our baguette in half to fit it into the bag. Marla and Jess were outraged. I was confident that we’d end up cutting it in half and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Our adventures over and the temperature soaring we retreated to the air conditioning to read and nap until it got late / dark / cool. Tomorrow Jess and I will go on an exciting 3-tank dive around Los Cabos. I can’t wait!

Day 5: Wednesday

You can read the dive reports for Land’s End and Pelican Rock separately. At the end of yesterday’s post I thought we’d be doing 3 dives. Due to poor planning and miscommunications we ended up doing 2 and having fun trying to get some money back from the dive operator. I’ve learned two lessons from that. First, Jess gets to handle the money when it comes to diving. I’ve messed things up twice, so now it’s her turn to try. Second, pay for 2 dives up front. You know you can do two dives. If possible, ask about doing a 3rd á la carte that way you add on vs. trying to subtract.

After our dives we came back to shower off and eat. Now that’s done everybody’s sitting around reading and relaxing. For lunch I made a salad and Jess made a sandwich. For dinner we headed out to The Shrimp Factory. We were, as always, harassed by the timeshare people after we ate. Apparently citronella is unknown in these parts of the world — there were flies everywhere trying to get at the shrimp shells.

Day 6: Thursday

Today was another day of relaxation. We had breakfast at the restaurant attached to the hotel. It was decent and reasonably priced. Not too much more to ask for. During breakfast (around 8:30 AM) it was already getting hot and humid. We decided to spend a lot of the day inside to beat de heat.

For lunch Kurt, Marla and myself headed out to Los Anjos. This local buffet was entirely my cup of tea. There was rice, beans, tacos, enchiladas … lasagna? Either way, everything was tasty and there were lots of Mexicans around. That made me feel quite a bit better. They had a pitcher of something that they called lemonade. It was more like some-kind-of-melon-aid. It wasn’t too sweet and it was quite refreshing in the heat. By the time we got out of the place there were quite a few black clouds over head and the wind was really whipping up.

Day 7: Friday

Didn’t get much sleep due to lots of wind whistling through the hotel and lots of rain. Woke up to what looked like a full-blown hurricane outside. A cruise ship that should have anchored decided to go someplace else. Can’t blame them. We decided to have breakfast at the hotel and not venture out. We waited until about 2 hrs before departure before leaving the hotel and got to the airport with loads of time. The place was deserted. There were no cab drivers assaulting the fresh arrivals or anything.

After getting checked in we noticed that our flight was more than an hour delayed. Hooray. We spent the next 3 hours in the airport. Reading, walking, watching people, playing Bejeweled — these were the ways we could pass the time. Finally there was some activity at the gate … for a different flight. So, about an hour after we should have been boarding, we finally got on a plane. The flight home was very relaxing and brief. Ash was waiting for us at the airport in Jessica’s very comfortable car. That was quite awesome of her. She took us home and our vacation was finally at an end!

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