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| Whale Watching off Cabo! |
Terry and Joyce invited us to stay with them at their Cabo San Jose timeshare this February, and we jumped at the chance. After spending a week in San Diego with my sisters and brewery exploring with friends John and Trish, we hopped on Alaska Airlines for the 2 hour flight to Cabo.
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| The View from the timeshare, looking at the Sea of Cortez. |
Well, the Cabo Azul timeshare was pretty opulent, a 2 bedroom suite with full kitchen, and the facility had all the amenities, from a fitness room and spa to a swim-up bar! The view from the balcony was pretty nice, too!
When we arrived, we were offered the usual deal; for a 2 hour sales presentation, we were offered a pretty nice gift. In this case it was a whale watching trip for 4; perfect! We suffered through the sales pitch and got a lunch out of the deal, too. The we were free to explore Cabo.
We hiked down the beach from the resort to the estuary, one of the few naturally green spots in this arid land. This was a stopping point for Spanish Galleons coming from the Philippines, on their way back to Spain.
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| Estuary at Cabo San Jose. |
The next day we headed south to Cabo San Lucas itself. We stopped at a beach, (Santa Maria), and I was able to do a little snorkeling. The water seemed a little cool at first but it must have been fairly warm since I was able to spend a fair amount of time floating about. The marine life was abundant and very colorful. This is definitely a good spot for snorkeling.
We continued down to Cabo San Lucas and explored a bit. We lunched at Cabo Wabo, they have some pretty good fish tacos there, the nachos were just okay. Happy hour starts at 9:00 AM(!), so we got 2 for 1 beers too. The place was really hopping when we were there at 2:00 PM, with live music and a pretty good crowd.
After lunch we hopped on a water taxi to get to Lands End, the southern most point of Baja California. The taxi ride was actually a lot of fun, the pilot took us all around the the Arch Rock and then back to "Lover's Beach".
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| Arch Rock at the tip of Baja. |
Lover's Beach is on the Sea of Cortez side of Lands End, walking across to "Divorce Beach" brings you to the Pacific Ocean! One of the few places you can stroll from one major body of water to another!
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| Lover's Beach, if you walk up the beach you come to... |
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| ...Divorce Beach! With the Pacific Ocean in view. |
That evening we enjoyed a very nice dinner at Don Sanchez, celebrating Terry and Joyce's 25 wedding anniversary, hard to believe how time flies. Don Sanchez is a fine place with great food, live music and wonderful service. I highly recommend it if you're in San Jose.
The next day we went whale watching. Our vessel was a large Zodiac style raft, quite large with powerful motors. We spent the first hour and half or so uneventfully, spotting some dolphins and a turtle, a few spouts and a couple of flukes. We were thinking we just had bad luck as the crew revved up the motors, I thought we were done. But they headed out away from the coast and joined a couple of other boats following what was at least a pair of Humpback whales which were putting on an awesome show, leaping into the air and then crashing back into the water with a loud crack!
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| Our tour suddenly got a lot more exciting! |
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| Think of the power needed to push 66,000 pounds into the air! |
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| Here you can see both of the whales at one time. |
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| One last wave before we go! |
We finally got back to town and had some fish tacos before catching our ride back to Cabo San Jose. That evening we enjoyed an outdoor art show in the old town and spent some time in the shops.
Friday was our last full day. Shelly and Joyce had some serious shopping to do so we spent more time in San Jose. Terry wanted to check out the Costco (!) in town so I tagged along, enjoying the scenery as we headed back toward San Lucas. Incidentally, the view from the Costco parking lot is quite striking, overlooking Cabo San Lucas!
We came back to San Jose and explored a little more of the town while looking for a certain tequila shop. Turns out that the Costco is on of the best places to buy tequila! I got a bottle on Don Julio 70th Anniversary edition for about $25!
Saturday was our departure date, we flew out of Cabo in the afternoon. Overall I thought Cabo was a fun place that I'd like to explore a bit more. There is a trail to a hilltop overlooking the harbor that can be hiked, and I would like to do a bit more snorkeling. And there are a lot of restaurants yet to be tried! I hope to return some day!
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| Rock formations near Lover's Beach. |
