Two days at sea fly by – we never know where the time goes, but Sunday was completely filled with Football, and then Monday, well, who knows? The weather is still a bit on the cool side, which we are enjoying. Not too many outdoor activities because of the chill so we’ve occupied ourselves otherwise. The lecturers aren’t the best on this voyage. As a matter of fact, the Naturalist who speaks about Mexico is so awful, that we only went to see her once and vowed never again. She had so many inaccuracies about Mexico – in addition to the fact that she couldn’t pronounce any of the port names, the worst was when she told the audience that the $1 US dollar equaled to 120 Mexican Pesos! More like $1 equals 14 Mexican Pesos. Those poor people who didn’t know better. So – other than that debacle…..oh…we also watched Draft Day. Finally. That was ok. Glad we didn’t pay for it at the theater though.
So, finally, it is Tuesday and we are tendering into Cabo. No one on this ship rushes off, which is odd to us. The CD mentioned this in the show, that to avoid the rush, go early on the tenders, but we didn’t really believe him until we got to the tender ticket line and there was no one there. No line at all. We were there before they opened (because past experience has showed us we need to be early!), and when they finally opened the doors there were maybe 20 people. We got out tickets (#3 and #4), waited about 5 minutes, then were on the first tender. Nice!
We arrived at the pier, wandered toward town and found the rental car kiosk easily enough. First in line there too. And good thing – because we had a little glitch with the reservations – somehow we had made them for Monday – not Tuesday! Oops! The agent was terribly helpful and accommodating though, long conversations with whoever has the cars, and we ended up with the same type of car we had reserved originally, and the same price. Very nice. So, that little glitch handled, we headed out through Cabo San USA to the lesser populated San Jose – and Miraflores, a lovely little town in the hills that another rental car customer told us about while we were waiting for the paperwork and cars to arrive.
We head first through San Jose, around the hotel zone to the Paseo do Estero, a paved walk through the San Jose Estuary. The pictures looked lovely, and we thought it would be a great counterpoint to the overdeveloped commercialization of Cabo San Lucas. The one thing we didn’t quite count on was the damage from Hurricane Odile. We never really thought about it, until we saw a lot of reconstruction on the hotels we passed, and then, once into the Estuary, it was so obvious the damage that was wrought. Trees down, the sounds of chainsaws and axes in the background, and the path and sea wall, once walkable all the way into town was now broken and completely missing in spots.
So much for our nature walk. Back in the car we rode through town, and then decided to head up into the mountains to see Miraflores. It took us about 30 minutes on a pretty windy and curvy road, past the Federale checkpoint and into the hills. It’s a lovely drive, very scenic and not another soul in sight.
We arrived in Miraflores, a sleepy little Mexican town, a little after 10. It looked like a great place to explore and have lunch, but we were way too early, and there wasn’t any place that struck us as being the town center, so we turned around and headed back down to San Jose.
We navigated the highway with the bizarre traffic lights that weren’t working, but that everyone treated as a 4 way stop. Interesting. Made it through the Federale checkpoint unscathed, and managed to score and awesome on street parking space right off the main square in San Jose.
We were looking for a restaurant we had read about in a tour book that claimed to have “honest to goodness” food at great prices. We wandered up the street, hit the ATM, but never found the restaurant. We even asked a local police officer, but he’d never heard of it either. Strange. So, a wandering we go.
We perused the main square – which was still adorned with Christmas decorations – checked out the hotel on the corner (for the bathrooms) and then stumbled upon La Osteria, the only wine bar we’ve ever seen in Mexico! What a find! Great wine – at actually reasonable prices – and a fantastic menu. Traditional Mexican fare, with a really different culinary twist. I had fish tacos in a jicama tortilla – so fresh and different! Ed had octopus ajillo style – which was exactly as he likes it – grilled and fresh. An excellent meal – and setting!
After our relaxing lunch break, we headed back to the car, stopping at the San Jose church on the way.
Then its off to Cabo with a pit stop at the local Costco, only to find that prices there were higher than in the states! Couldn’t believe it. Plus, if you didn’t pay with a Costco debit card, there was a surcharge on each item you purchased – they listed one price for debit card purchase; a higher price for other forms of payment.
The drive into town is simple – really only one main road – and we’re back at the marina in no time. We stop off at one of the little bars that line the marina – it happens to be a Rolling Stone theme bar – cool! - and have a couple of beers before we get back aboard. When we walk back to the pier, the tender line is huge! But it actually goes quite quickly and we’re back taking pictures of Los Arcos and Lovers Beach from our balcony in no time.
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