Bilbo and Agnes's Marvelous Vacation - Part 5: Cabo San Lucas

The last place on we visited on our cruise to the "Mexican Riviera" was Cabo San Lucas, located at the southern tip of Baja California. This is a beautiful place, with the marvelous views beginning with the rock formations at the entrance to the bay...

As at Zihuatanejo, our ship was unable to anchor at the pier, and so we rode into the port on the ship's tenders. This was the view we had of the Star Princess as we sailed for the shore...

Once at the dock, we quickly discovered that Cabo San Lucas was more like Acapulco than like Zihuatanejo or Puerto Vallarta. This was because we had to run the gauntlet of hyper-aggressive taxi drivers, tour offerers, and street vendors...and that was just to get to the regular stores and restaurants. I was a little disappointed because Mike had assured me that even a geeky tourist like myself could pick up a cute girl with a nice tail...unfortunately, he wasn't specific enough...

Not to be outdone, Agnes wanted to prove she could go home with a handsome Mexican guy on her mind...

Agnes wanted to take the opportunity to do her last gift (and jewelry) shopping of the trip, and so we fought our way through the street vendors (and four cruise-ship-loads of tourists) in search of the stores she wanted to visit...

We marched resolutely through the town from store to store, trying to ensure that our luggage would meet the airline weight restrictions on the way home by getting rid of the last of our heavy excess cash. Eventually we ended up at lunchtime at the one place in town I'd wanted to visit: El Squid Roe.

If you've ever visited Jimmy Buffett's original Margaritaville Cafe in Key West, Florida, this is very much like it - extraordinarily, grandly, and supremely tacky, but with much better food. The picture is supposed to capture the tackiness of the restaurant, not the tourist...


Agnes had been longing for chips with salsa and guacamole, both of which were prepared in big stone bowls at our table by our waiters...

Agnes, reading the fine print in the ship's shopping guide for Cabo San Lucas, asked our waiter about the daily shrimp special. He looked at her blankly, went to consult with his boss, then came back and recommended the "Tarzan Shrimp." Agnes checked it out on the menu and immediately ordered it when she saw the part about the dish being prepared and flambeed at tableside. They weren't kidding...

This was how it finally looked...and how my delicious beef something-or-other looked, too...

After lunch we waddled out of the restaurant and killed time wandering up and down the beachfront shopping area before returning to the ship. As I noted above, the street vendors here were impossibly tenacious and aggressive...men hawking silver bracelets would follow us for blocks, fastening bracelets on Agnes's wrists and insisting on the excellence of their prices. If you bought from one guy, six others would smell the touristy chum in the water and descend on us for a piece of the financial action. I quickly learned that my all-purpose survival Spanish expression, "No, gracias!" actually translated as an invitation to crank up the sales pressure. If we ever go back, my vocabulary will include more useful expressions like, "Back off, you $#%@! or I'll tear your head off and shove it up your &*#!" The vendors all expected you to haggle with them, were very adept at peering into your wallet or purse to see how much money you really had, and were masters of the exasperated "you're killing me, and my children will starve" lines that usually preceeded accepting your offered price. On the other hand, the shops lining the cruise ship tender arrival piers were almost uniformly unwilling to haggle, probably because there were four cruise ships in the harbor, yielding lots of pigeons ready to be plucked.

Here's one last picture of the harbor area...

One of the most fascinating parts of the stop in Cabo San Lucas was the actual departure from the harbor. The sunset was one of the most glorious we'd seen so far, and the intricate ballet of four enormous cruise ships maneuvering around each other as they left for various destinations was a most interesting sight. Here are a few pictures of the sunset and the Great Departure...

That was our brief, action-packed visit to Cabo San Lucas. As the Star Princess headed northwest for two days at sea enroute back to San Francisco, we thought about the four towns we'd visited on the "Mexican Riviera," and decided we'd enjoyed Puerto Vallarta and Zijuatanejo the most - the people were friendlier and the scenery more interesting. We didn't especially care for Acapulco or Cabo San Lucas, mostly because of the hyper-aggressiveness of the street vendors.

Tomorrow, Cartoon Saturday returns, and Sunday will be the last post on our trip, featuring answers to buring questions like "what do you do during three days at sea?" and "did it really cost five dollars to go to the bathroom in Zijuatanejo?" Stay tuned.

Have a good post-Thanksgiving day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo