3:20 pm. Whew! Mexico (so far) is everything I should have expected but didn't because I forgot to listen. For one thing, it's hot. Damn hot. Oppressively hot, sauna hot. Not that I'm complaining, because I should have expected it, if I'd been paying attention. I guess you just don't appreciate it until you're in the middle of it.
Also, and this will be no surprise to anyone else, it's a total tourist trap. There are people all along every street trying to attract your attention and get you to buy necklaces, scarves, Chiclets, whatever. It's amazing how many people can apparently earn a living this way, because from what I saw they mostly get ignored.
Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of Baja California, is a tender port, which doesn't mean what I would have thought it meant. There's simply no dock for a gigundis ship like ours, and the water is too shallow to let us get close.
So we get ferried ashore in groups on the ship's lifeboats (which they've renamed "tenders" to avoid the Titanic association). It's a quick trip aboard a two-deck launch that's nothing like what was in the movie. Nobody had to row, because it had an engine. How modern!
We were in Cabo for about four hours, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. Mostly we walked around and looked at the things in the shops, stopping every so often to drink. I had two Coronas at the Hard Rock Café, then a margarita at Cabo Wabo. Then another Corona. I came back to the ship with Tammy and David, about an hour before everybody else. I managed not to spend any money there (except for food and drink, of course).
Cabo San Lucas might once have been a dusty little fishing village, but it's nothing like that any more. Still, it's nothing like any town in the United States, either. It's mostly shops, bars and restaurants, surrounded by a huge marina with a lot of impressive boats (most of them owned by gringos). All the people are friendly, except for the drivers who'd like to mow you down as you cross their street. And it's oh, so hot. |