Cabo San Lucas, B.C.S., Mexico

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Sailing Caravan

Ang with dolphin on bow

3 Dec 2002, Tuesday - We left Bahía Santa María at the same time as many other boats in the anchorage. It was no surprise given the forecast for favorable winds. When we pulled up stakes at 3 AM, we were followed by Pelican, Waking Dream,

Night watch in shorts!

Alii Kai Too (Jim & Penny), Dos Brisas (Earl & Maria), and a boat we had never met named Kailani out of Seattle with a couple named Rosanne and Peter aboard. We didn't make any attempts to stay near each other, but it certainly ended up that way. We all pulled into Cabo San Lucas 35 hours later within an hour of each other.

The trip south was warmer than any we'd experienced so far. Eric was very excited to finally be able to be on night watch with only a pair of shorts on (right). We are so thankful to not need foul weather gear as we did up in the Puget Sound. Once again, we were lucky to have dolphins play on our bow wake. They were so close that Angela (top left) thought that maybe she might be able to reach out and touch them. If the distance to the water from our bow was any less, it would have been possible.

Cabo, Cabo, Cabo!

4 Dec 2002, Wednesday - The morning we were going to be pulling in to

Fresh Dorado

Cabo, we caught a beautiful Dorado just after sunrise. It was the most amazingly colorful fish either of us had ever seen (left). After cleaning up, we began to round the corner into Cabo San Lucas. Just as we were doing so, we spotted some whales off of our beam. These whales were at a pretty good distance, so we weren't able to ID them for sure. We are guessing that they were humpback whales from what we could see.

The peacefulness of the trip south ends as soon as you set foot in Cabo. Everything is wild and crazy in the large city. Clubs, restaurants and vendors all cater to the tourists. Vendors lined the walkways and would only use the phrase "Hola amigo" and then revert quickly back to English with "Good price for you!" It was a very weird experience after Turtle Bay and Bahía Santa María.

Nonetheless, we definitely enjoyed our time there. When we arrived, we wanted to check out the water temperature as everyone on the way south kept using Cabo as the benchmark for warmer waters. The phrase "it doesn't

Approaching Cabo

start to get warm until Cabo" was heard repeatedly. We jumped overboard for a saltwater shower right away. We have nothing further south to compare it to, but it definitely felt comfortable. A friend of ours with a water temperature gage reported that the temperature was 78 degrees. We heard later that from the latest sea surface temperature map, Puerto Vallarta was slated to be 81 degrees! To me, that sounds like bath water!

5 Dec 2002, Thursday - We spent much of our first day in Cabo working our way through the check-in process. As we had not yet been to any real cities in Mexico, this was our first official point of entry. We took the bus to Migración and then back into town. From there we walked to the Capitanía de Puerto (Port Captain), over to the bank to pay, over to the API (we don't even know what that stands for) to pay something else, and then back to the Port Captain to prove that we paid everything we owed. All in all, It cost us an one-time $40 fee to enter the country, $5 for something we're not really sure of at API (we don't really know what they do) and then a $29 port entry/exit fee. Having never done this, we were not really sure if this was a lot or a little. Only the large ports have port captains that require fees for just being there. Our next location with a port captain will be in Puerto Vallarta.

That night, Angela went out with the crowd from Pelican and Waking Dream into the wild world of Cabo. Every other building is a night club. The music varies dramatically. Some clubs play all English pop songs while another place (with no other gringos inside) played live Mexican tunes. That place was excellent. When we arrived, only the waiters, bartenders and prep chefs were dancing. One of them asked Angela to dance and it was all downhill from there. Angela loves dancing! AND, it was a great way to be able to speak Spanish while in Cabo. So after that first dance, she danced with almost everyone who worked at that restaurant/club. Having never danced to that style of music, she wasn't sure what to do, but the wait staff kindly gave mini dance lessons. It was very fun once we picked it up. After a bit, a couple others from our group joined her on the dance floor and eventually each of the waiters had a dance partner.

Lover's Beach and a Time Share?

6 Dec 2002, Friday - We spent as much of the day as we could at Playa del Amour (Lover's Beach) getting thrashed by waves. While the anchorage side was pretty mellow, this beach stretches from there to the Pacific side where waves were cresting nicely. We brought our boogie boards and really had a wild time getting pushed about by the surf. It was excellent! You could just sit right near the breaker line and get pushed up and down the beach 20 feet or more from the force of the wave coming in and then heading back out to sea. After we were totally torn up from the waves, we migrated over to the calm side and went snorkeling.

8 Dec 2002, Sunday - Just to be goofy and get a free shower, we spent our morning visiting a time share and hearing their sales pitch in exchange for the use of their facilities. We weren't really sure how it would work out, but in the end we were happy we did it. Some guys working for them on the street in Cabo tried to get us to go. We said no and they kept including more goodies in exchange for us showing up at this meeting. All we really wanted was to be able to use their pool and showers... but, in the end, we were given a gift certificate for a local restaurant, 2 Mexican blankets, 4 bottles of tequila and the use of their facilities for a week. All this, just so that we would listen to what a great bargain their time share was. And the best part, the sales pitch was given while we were given a free brunch. You could enjoy your food while the other person talked. We told the guy downtown that wanted us to go that we weren't at all interested and he said it wasn't a problem. There are restrictions for going to these things, and we didn't really meet any of them: you must be 28 or older (Angela's not), must be gainfully employed (nope) and must be staying at a local hotel - this is to weed out boaters like ourselves we presume. The person signing us up told us which hotel we were "staying" in. How bizarre is that? Whatever, the place had a waterslide into the pool and a hot tub! We certainly won't complain!

9 Dec 2002, Monday - We had planned to leave this day early in the morning, but Angela had picked up a cold while in Cabo, as had the crews from Pelican and Waking Dream, making Eric think that it was wise to not have gone out dancing Thursday night as he had escaped unscathed. It turned out to be a good decision as our friends on Pelican took off that day for Los Frailes and were hit on the nose by some strong winds and chop in the afternoon when they began heading north up into the Sea of Cortez. It took them 5 hours to go the last 10 miles. Ouch! Since the stronger winds mostly were taking place in the afternoons, we decided to pull anchor at 10:30 PM that evening after talking to them on the SSB radio and making our trip to Los Frailes overnight.

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