Travel Trails: Cabo San Lucas

The summer before I got married Beth and I found ourselves in Cabo San Lucas.  After checking that our passports were still current, we headed southwest from Indiana.  We landed in Cabo San Lucas from San Diego via a puddle hopper plane.  We were the only ones on the tiny plane.  Neither of us had ever been on such a small airplane.  This fact was not lost on our pilots.  They made our flight as smooth and pleasant as one is able in a plane that in my mind had no business being airborne.  We arrived to a little airport safely.

We rented a car.  No one at the counter told us what type of car we were renting.  Someone from the counter just brought the car to us.  As soon as we saw our car, we knew this was going to be a fantastic trip.  The car was a topless bright white VW.   We laughed ourselves to tears and ended up flipping a coin for who got to drive first.  Beth won.

Renee in "Whitey" lost in the desert. Photo credit: Beth Sayer

“Oh!  By the way, Beth, we have to drive on the other side of the road.”

We eventually got the hang of driving on the left-hand side of the road.  The side on which everyone else in the world drives.  Driving on the right-hand side of the road always reminds me of our forefathers’ rebellion.  Clearly, they were putting an exclamation point on their intent to be free and independent. 

We stayed at a luxury resort because we were there during the off season.  In addition to the discounted rate, we pretty much had the place all to ourselves. 

Luxury is a perfect adjective for the place we stayed.  The suites were the size of my apartment in Chicago and king size does not quite do the beds justice.  The suites opened up to the beach, which we also had mostly to ourselves. 

We could see right through the water of the inlet.  For the time we spent in the pools and the ocean, I was surprised we did not grow gills. 

The second morning, I slept in, and Beth went out to go canoeing.  She came back to the room.  Woke me up and asked me how to say canoe.  I muttered canoa.  Not very long after, Beth came back into the room.  I was still asleep. She woke me up with the guise of a hot cup of coffee. Then, she proceeded to tell me she needed help because she had managed to gather a bunch of men at the beach when she asked for a correa.  I spit my coffee out with laughter. Instead of using the word I gave her for canoe, she was using the word correa which means thong.  She was asking a bunch of men on the beach where she could rent a thong for the day.  Talk about getting lost in translation.  I had some explaining to do when we went back to the beach.  I should mention I am fluent in Spanish and Beth was not.    

At that point, we decided we would just go parasailing. What a beautiful way to sightsee!  I remember not wanting to ever come down from the sky.  Like all great things that are a vacation, eventually, I had to get back onto the boat of reality.  Our guides took us to a place where the saltwater ocean meets the fresh water from the bay.  It is called the Aches and Endings Land.  It is a scuba diver’s paradise. Beth had a blast.  I tried to snorkel, but I just cannot go without air.  I am a mountain person.  The two arches make for wonderful beaches.  I was able to enjoy the water without going under it.  As a side note, there is a company that offers tours from a clear bottom boat.  Once we had completed Beth’s scuba diving mission, we said goodbye to our private resort.  We moved along with our journey in our little white car with a sunroof.

The Arches of Cabo San Lucas. Photo credit: Beth Sayer

For our next stop, we arranged to stay in the house of a friend of one of the families we met at the resort.  We found the house.  Our hostess was all that is welcoming about Mexican people.  She considered us family because we had gotten to know a relative of hers.  That’s all it took for this young woman to welcome us into her home.  She gave us free reign of her house and we had great conversation.  She told us where the locals went to eat and hang out and she gave us directions to a place to watch the sunset.  With that information, we set out for another day in Mexico.  Our hostess could not have been more correct about where to have breakfast and lunch.  We ate incredible food with the locals and again enjoyed wonderful conversations.

When it was time to watch the sunset, we realized we had lost the directions.  We were not discouraged.  How hard could it be?  We go westward.  Well, that seemingly simple idea, did not go as planned.  There was no end to our westward journey.  We drove so far west we ended up in an isolated desert area with just a few simple houses scattered far apart from one another.  We also stuck out like a sore thumb to any, including children, who happened to be outside.  We were way out of our element.  I did not feel comfortable intruding by stopping to ask for directions.  We would just have to turn around and hope we could make our way back to our hostess’ house.  We eventually managed to make our way back around midnight.

The next morning, after a taco breakfast at our favorite local hang out, we decided to drive to La Paz.  La Paz is roughly 100 miles and takes about 2 hours or so we were told.  The road to La Paz is truly a long and winding one.  Instead of watch for deer signs, the road signs said watch for mountain lions.  Yes.  One needs to watch for mountain lions on the road we took.  The road was narrow and made its way around the curves of the terrain.  We may not have been real locals, but we knew if little white convertible car met mountain lion, which one would win that encounter. Fortunately, that encounter never happened. 

Renee in La Paz. Photo by: Beth Sayer

When we made it to La Paz, we dined on fabulous seafood and, yes, we watched the sunset from the comfort of an outdoor restaurant!  In Spanish "la paz" means "peace".  After a long and winding road, and not just the one we drove to get to La Paz, we had indeed found peace.  We sat in peace.  We ate in peace.  We sat in silence in peace.  You get the idea.   We spent the entire evening and well late into the night at the restaurant, which around 10 p.m. morphed into quite the party place with live music and dancing.  We stayed so late by the time we drove back to Cabo we barely had time to grab our stuff and say a quick goodbye to our hostess, Guadalupe Maria.  

We were off and on our way to the second leg of our adventure, Guadalajara.   The story of our travel to and the time we spent in Guadalajara is for another article.