That was the joke the camel guy made when we went camel riding in Cabo San Lucas on our vacation. The actual camel ride was about 250 seconds long and not something I’d go out of the way to do again, but the dad jokes were impressively thick.
Yep — we went to Cabo again! Last time, it was the hardest trip I’ve ever been on by a long shot. Fortunately, like all good trauma, I’ve managed to bury it somewhere inside of me so it come out in little unpredictable spurts rather than, you know, process it with help like an adult.
Fortunately, this time we all had shiny new passports with perfectly valid expiration dates, and aside from a minor standard-issue flight delay, had an easy time getting there.
We stayed at the Hilton Los Cabos. It was nice not to have to make that decision as we tagged along with Miranda’s brother and family who were there on their family vacation. He works for Edward Jones and vacations like this are a perk of the trade. There is a whole three-ring binder of vacations you page through and point at. Nice work if you can get it.
Their family had a variety of Edward Jones-related required activities during the week, but not too much. Apparently they do it that way so the whole thing can technically be a business trip and probably has tax benefits of some kind. Someday I’ll be able to tell you how business works. Just so you know, the guy who actually made Edward Jones the success it is was Ted not Ed, and so my brother-in-law calls him Tedward Jones and apparently nobody laughs at that which is their loss, really.
The Hilton is a lovely place. Loads of pools with cabanas, a hot tub, a decent beach, friendly staff, and plenty of chairs that you don’t have to fight for even on Spring Break when I assumed I’d have to go out at 5am and lay out towels and a book I bought at the airport called something like The Beautiful Neighbor which has a cool cover with abstract pine trees and scripty yellow writing and they’ll give me $4 back if I bring it back to the airport book store but I’ll feel too bad to do that because I splashed a little water on it and some of the pages have that bendy thing going on and nobody would ever buy a new book like that but hey at least everybody knows that THIS CHAIR IS TAKEN.
We got there Saturday evening ready to eat. We just stumbled into Talavera (one of the five restaurants there) (I kept singing Guantanamera in my head except GuanTalavera which I regret mentioning). Despite being absolutely exhausted, had a wonderful meal. I’m glad we did, because we never got another chance to eat at Talavera again. They were closed one night, and two other nights they had very limited “speciality” nights that really didn’t live up to their normal experience. Seriously skip the “fiesta night” which is just tacos, you can do better. That first night I had mole-covered enchiladas and fancied up corn on the cob and Miranda had sea bass and we were both very happy. Maybe my favorite was the tamarind margarita though, it was very tastefully done. I’m a tamarind lover though — I have a bunch of pods in the cabinet right now to eat directly that a friend graciously sent from down South.
The next morning Ruby and I got up early and went down to the beach in time for sunrise. Cabo is in the same time zone as us and still the travel dinked up our sleep a bit. The beaches weren’t particularly soft sand. My wimpy feat had a hard time of it that morning, but by the end of the week my feet had noticeably toughened up. The sand is so good for my feet skin. I should go to the beach more.
Miranda hit the spa for a massage Sunday morning and I hit the pool with the family. We were able to book a nice cabana while checking in so we had a good home base. I was determined not to get sun burn the first day so I lathered up pretty good. But then I got totally burned anyway. I think that’s just gringo physics. If I worked there I would place bets on how red people got during their trip. There are people selling hats on the beach, and they basically rushed me when they saw my bald ass on the beach. I later made my nephew go buy me one. I gave him $30 not knowing that the hats were $35. They sold him the hat anyway. So basically I’m a cheap ass by negligence. Still, I have a feeling the markup on straw hats in Mexico is decent and a little haggling experience is good for the boy.
We strolled the beach, played in the ocean, and climbed around on the rocks, finding interesting little crabs, little pools with zebra-stripped fish, and snails galore. I wish we spent more time on the rocks. There was a lot of animal kingdom action happening there.
One night we ate at LENA, which is the pool bar during the day turned Mediterranean steakhouse by night. I wasn’t feeling a steak (we had a bummer one the night before at the inside bar restaurant) so I got a burger which was also kind of a bummer (why do they make burgers that are like 9″ tall? what is the point of that? nobodys mouth can open 9″?? so what do you do? i’m not joking i literally don’t get it. i deconstructed it and ate awkward parts of it together. i should have been like waiter, bring me a blender or actually trade it in for a Whopper because that’s a proper burger goshdamnit). BUT — they made a Chimichurri that was so delicious I’m still thinking about it. It had sweet red peppers in it diced into super duper tiny cubes that gave it this subtle crunch that was pitch perfect.
That adventure park we went to (remember that camel joke — cabo dhabi — hilarious) had lots of activities. We actually started with a UTV ride. The UTVs are kind of neat. I could imagine owning one would be a ton of fun. But in this case we had a guide keeping speed way down (they felt like intentionally throttled down engines also) it kinda just felt like a slow cushy stroll through the park. It was neat to see surrounding area from different perspectives but if you would expect some adrenaline out of this you would be disappointed. Oh by the way you don’t say ATV. ATVs are those four-wheelers with like the motorcycle handlebars and the fake black leather bench seat that bring your girlfriend on and tip over. UTVs are like big cage car things with a steering wheel at seat belts. They stand for Unfuckingbelivablyexpensive Terrain Vehicles.
There were lots of other things to do at Wild Canyon, including get way more sunburned. Our cousin family went zip lining (Ruby was too little). There was a water park area we chilled at. We had lunch. Oh, hey, chicken fingers are weirdly great all over Cabo. Seriously, get the chicken fingers. I wanted a lemonade, but was informed that lemonade was not one of the beverages included in the meal plan I pre-purchased. I looked at him in silence for a long time and then re-iterated that I would like a lemonade. I can be a real dick when I want a lemonade. We saw a variety of animals, like some kind of duck that looked very mean but also very cool and I don’t wanna look up what it is because the mystery made it cooler. And some other stuff.
Oh and the one girl camel gave us all big smooches. Her name was Sahara. Miranda made a GIF of it and you WILL download the 1.1 MegaBytes of it:
We went whale watching. Whale watching is cool as hell. There was maybe 25 people on the boat. Here’s a story about one of them. So we get picked up from the hotel in a shuttle thing. There is a woman there maybe mid 50s who comes with us. She’s like: I dropped my 20-year-old son off in town earlier, he wanted to go snorkeling. I was like haha yeah right more like snorkeling Coronas at Señor Frogs and she was like [forced light laughter]. Then at the Whale Watching Headquarters thing where we all met at before the trip, the son shows up and he’s like MOM!!! and he’s friggin hammered. Then he came on the whale watching trip and he was actually a sweet kid. At one point he went to pee and she exhaled and was like phew — not too bad, could be drunker (outloud) and it turns out he was just standing on the stairs and was like mom I’m right here I can literally hear you.
We saw a mama and baby humpback whale practicing breeching. It was awesome. I didn’t take any pictures though because all I had was my phone and phone pictures of such a cool thing make me sad. It felt great being out on the water. You look at the water so much while you’re there it’s nice to actually engage with it a bit. See the iconic arch and all that.
Overall, most of our time was spent eating (no complaints, the breakfast buffet was pretty great, hard to beat a freshly pressed tortilla with melted, slightly burnt cheese) and hanging out at the pool and ocean. We did an adults only dinner at Vela one night which was quite good, although the service was a little off their game. I particularly enjoyed the oysters that were extravagantly prepared with a dollop of caviar on top and bright acids. The outdoor sushi restaurant by the family pool was also quite good and we lunched there twice.
Oh one more thing! On our last fraught trip to Cabo, I had purchased a mini banjo to take with for funzies. Annnnd. I just randomly left it on a plane on the way down. Gone forever. I kinda forgot about because all the travel stuff on that trip sucked so much worse.
This time I picked up another one, and was able to play it all week and it was tons of fun, and it even made it home safe and sound. It’s tuned in C so that was weirding me out but whatever I was just plucking around.
10/10
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