Best of Cabo San Lucas 2018

Here are my best pics.  Hope you enjoy...

  

 

 

  

 

 

  

  

  

  

What the HELL is wrong with you?

I had been planning a post about the “leaving process” for days.  How the night before departure - regular life worries begin to creep back in.  How I knew it would not be as restful a sleep as the past days of listening to the rolling waves through our open sliding door.  How the pretty girls at the airport in Cabo are all wearing stretch pants, tossled hair, and no makeup on their sunburned faces (unlike the glitzy bedazzled beachwear they had on when we left Denver).

But then the subject of this post took a related but dramatic change.

The Cabo airport is small.  And on Saturdays (especially during peak seasons like Spring Break) it is a VERY busy place.  After quickly checking in and grabbing lunch (do NOT EVER eat at Sbarro’s after a week of five star meals), we drifted around looking for some chairs to sit in.  There was probably enough room for everyone, but hung-over and selfish Americans were taking up entire rows to lay down.  

Marci wanted some ice tea, so we moseyed over to a healthy walk-up deli at the end of the terminal.  Most venues had really long lines, but this one was small and moving fast.  Marci walked up to grab a tea when another man brushed past her and in front of another customer.  And then it happened.  

The guy who had cut in front of everyone pushed his way further ahead, then told the older man he’d jostled that there was a line and that he should wait his turn.  Now I am not exactly an expert in lines, but nothing seemed to indicate there was any line until customers queued to pay.  The older man said something gruff back to the first guy and then all hell broke loose.  The men started cussing (like you’d hear in a biker bar) and then the first guy began to attempt to provoke the older man into a physical fight.  I’m not even joking.

The first guy, a tall, athletic, professional looking American in his late fifties, pushed right into the other man (as I said older, perhaps in his early seventies - looking more like a retiree) and with a physique nearing 300 pounds. It was surreal. The older man didn’t back down but he clearly didn’t want a fight either.  He was making his own LOUD point with invective not suitable for any Saturday - much less on the eve of Christ’s Resurrection.  And then the first guy leaned down and picked up his three-year-old child.  She, very wide-eyed at the unfolding debacle, was lifted up INTO the fray.

WHAT?!?!?

Once the first guy had seriously intimated the old man he began to walk away.  All the while, f-bombing his new nemesis (and of course all of the hundreds of other passengers in ear shot) and taunting the man for being “so fat”.

Wow.  Just wow. What can you even say to that?

Marci and I retreated to a wall by our gate (of course we had to stand so others could sleep comfortably on ‘their’ row of seats).  We tried to make sense of it.  I mean, these were not pubescent boys dripping testoerone from a every pore and fighting over a tanned goddess.  And one would presume that each had just spent a week in a paradise few in the world are lucky enough to enjoy.  There had to be more to this than a quick encounter with another alpha-male at an airport deli?  Did the first guy lose his wife to a dark-skinned, muscle-bound, Mexican?  Was he diagnosed with terminal personality cancer?  And what about that little girl?  What will she remember?  What did she learn?

We also wondered how the story we witnessed would be re-told?  By both men... Surely they will cast themselves as victim’s defending their honor (or some other crock of crap).  I’ll tell you what happened.  What really happened. Those sophmoric “men” embarrassed themselves, our country, and everyone around them.  What a disgrace.

I was tempted to follow the first man.  At first to jibe him, and ask him if he was proud of himself?  Then to chastise him for acting like that with a child. But finally, Iwanted to try to gently help him see himself through everyone else’s eyes.  But that isn’t how America works in 2018.  We shut up and look the other way.

I’m not sure what to take away.  I can tell you without question I would NEVER act this way or tolerate it in my family.  I feel sorry for both men.  I feel sorriest for that baby girl.  And I also realize that just as they had a choice - so do I.

With that, I commit to choose happiness.  I choose to be kind in dealing with others.  I choose courtesy to others, and others before self.  I choose to relish the good and peaceful experience I just ejoyed and to foster the flame of the “Cabo Peace” as long as I can while heading back into regular life.

I am blessed and I choose to be a blessing to others.

Hallelujah, Christ is Risen.

Amen

(Sex)ico

I’ve debated whether to tell this story.  Oh, it’s a good tale, with laughs, and tears, and shakes of heads. And I decided I will tell it -as is.

There is a sad side of the world of the poor.  We all know it exists too. The internal struggle with how far one will go to get ahead.  Or to survive.

In 2011, I was standing outside the stunningly beautiful Catederal de Grenada in Nicaragua.  The priests were saying Mass as the poor gathered outside the front doors.  Marci and I chatted with an American dentist and his family doing mission work amongst the poor.  A woman holding an infant, in the photo below, pulled me slightly away from the group of Amiricans, and bluntly offered to give me sex for money. I was stunned and embarrassed. I am sure I flushed as I tried to be gentle and firm in my ‘no’.  Because she had been scarred badly in fire and thinking I found her undesirable, she was embarrassed too.

So very sad.

Marci and I have since seen and learned more about the illicit sex trade in poor countries. Both Mexico City and Nicaragua have posters (in English) trying to persuade Americans not to seek children for sex. 

And here we are in Cabo, Mexico.  During Spring Break.  So yes, there are beautiful girls in small bikinis everywhere.  

Sooooo...

Two years ago I came here with my son, Josh. We would walk into town each night for dinner.  And it was a little weird.  Almost every block, sometimes multiple times in a block, girls (always heavily made up and dressed all in black) leaned out of store fronts and asked if we wanted a massage.  Now, having a Mexican in Cabo ask you to buy something is as normal as seafood tacos. But, I really DID want a massage.  So I stopped.

The girl said it was $30 for an hour massage.  But I was stressed- thinking more like a 90 minute stone massage.  When I asked her how much that would be she seemed confused.  She acted like I was talking in code.  She asked the other girls in the shop - and they seemed to settle on the theory that I wanted two therapists.  I left confused.

Josh came to me a few hours later (after some Reddit research) and explained that $30 got you in the door - but there was a great deal more for sale. These shops are all located in the tourist district - where cruise ships dump their American and Canadian passengers.

Yes, I was embarrassed.  I suppose the fact that the shop had a velvet couch in the front window should have been a clue...

Now I just ignore or wave as I walk quickly by.

But it is sad to me that there is a desperation to all of this.  Girls willing, or needy enough, to sell themselves. And men desperate enough to succumb to such a meaningless act.

Like I said before, so very sad.

The humble side of Cabo, Mexico

If you are a long time reader of this blog, or if you go back a few posts, or if you know Marci and I very well - then you know the people we really like to seek out on our adventures are the more humble folks.  We enjoy getting to know the cleaning staff, or greeting the maintenance man, or chatting with a poor family operating a food cart among the locals.  We just seem to fit better with these folks.

In contrast, through we LOVE spending time at the infintiy pool - or tasting duck confit with a glass of Cabernet at La Roca - we’d rather chat up the bus boy than listen to the complaining US soccer mom on table fifteen.  We roll our eyes as leather skinned retirees reminisce about trips to St.John’s or how this compares to Maui - just loud enough to make sure everyone else hears the shallow conversation.  Blah!

We talked to a man in Cabo a few years ago. He wistfully spoke about working at the Grand Solmar someday.  He said it was a dream job for a local - and no one would ever mess up the opportunity if they got a job there.  He was waiting for some paperwork from the Mexican state he was raised in (Guerro) before the resort would consider hiring him.  It explains why the staff are so friendly and attentive - they REALLY want this steady income!

I like to take day trips into the town where the staff live.  To greet them and take photos.  To get a feel for the life they live.  It also reminds me how blessed we are - and that it is SO important to spend money here to support the economy and to TIP WELL!

Here are the people who make this five star resort and the whole Cabo experience possible....

Mexican vistas

We have now spent two very relaxing days at the pool, walking along the beach, and enjoying five star food.  I thought I would go light on the writing today, and give you a view of the “texture”of resort life.  Some food, some people, some atmosphere....