Honeymoon – Day 2

My version:

This morning, we had breakfast out on the terrace since it wasn’t too hot yet. When we finished, we noticed a spectacular yellow and black bird pecking at the crumbs we left behind in the pastry basket. I tried to get a picture of it, but couldn’t get too close for fear it would fly away.

After breakfast, we caught a cab into Cabo San Lucas, which is about 20 miles from San Jose del Cabo. SJDC is older and more laid back than CSL, which has a reputation for being a party town. We were actually going to see another hotel and their grounds in case we decided we wanted to return to CSL….or that’s what our tour group told us. It turned out to be a time-share presentation. We just gritted out teeth and got out of there as soon as we could. I guess it wasn’t too bad…..we got to hear some of Cabo’s history, plus we got a free breakfast, a Mexican blanket, a bottle of tequila, a glass bottom boat tour, and a $50 dinner certificate out of the deal….plus the taxi fare from and to our hotel.

When we returned, we had lunch by the pool. I had the catch of the day (red snapper) on a sandwich with a jalapeno sauce that was excellent! William had……well, let’s just say his eyes were bigger than his stomach. After lounging by the pool, like typical honeymooners, we ended up back in our room. The poor maid……everytime she made the bed, we destroyed it.

Early evening, we rented a car and drove to CSL and ate at Las Palmas where we could use the $50 dinner certificate. Driving there was a trial in itself. William not only had to dodge crazed Mexican drivers, but also had to be watchful for the Mexican Kamikaze cows that would eat, then wonder out on the main roads. We had rented a VW that had half the roof cut away (over the back seat). Good thing it rarely rains here!

Watching William’s profile while he’s driving, I smile and feel tears sting the my eyes while I try to suppress them……for I am the happiest woman in the world!

His version:

We awakened this morning to the doorbell’s chime.  I slithered grudgingly from between the cool sheets and stumbled, squinting and wild-maned, to the door.  The hotel robes were nice, but were built for someone about seven-eighths my size.  I snarled and made do.

If the room-service steward was unused to growling cro-magnons answering guest’s doors, then he gave no sign.  With a cheerful efficiency he distributed our breakfast on the coffee table, complete with white linen and a tiny vase of flowers.  I scrawled someone’s name on the bill and he departed.  On closer inspection, breakfast was—like everything else about the Palmilla so far—beautiful: assorted pastries, a plate of citrus fruit with a honey-mint glaze, fresh-squeezed orange juice, tea with cream and sugar, and the New York Times fax edition.  Yes, I could come to like it here…

Anita and I sighed our way through breakfast and then tossed on some clothes and headed out to check out the new resort that our tour agency, ContactTours, had recommended.  After all, we might want to stay there next time we were in Cabo (although it did seem hard to imagine anyone outdoing the Palmilla by this point).  My first hint that something might be wrong came when we called a taxi and the valet, hearing our destination, remarked “ah, timeshare”.  Timeshare?  Suddenly the tour agent’s incentives to get us there began to make much more sense.  At the airport, she had left us with the impression that this was a new hotel which would be opening soon, not a timeshare.  Anita and I looked at each other.  What the hell, we decided, it’s only about an hour and a half.  We can live through that.

Three hours later, we finally said “no” for the last time and collected our promised loot from a sullen woman who seemed to take it as a personal insult that we had not bought into the wonderful and exciting world of Mexican timeshare.  After listening to her endless desperate pitch, I found it hard to condemn her; that job would make me bitter and unhappy too.  I left the Gringo Grande (or whatever the place’s name was) with a spring in my step, happy beyond measure that I was not selling Mexican timeshares on commission in ninety degree heat.

We returned to our hotel and had lunch by the hotel swimming pool.  The ocean in front of the Palmilla is a bit rocky and apparently has a dangerous undertow, so swimming is limited to the area near the boat landing a hundred yards north or so.  This, frankly, is fine with me since I was only marginally interested in swimming in the ocean in the first place.  The pool itself is quite nice, with a swim-up bar and a cascade over the seaward side that provides a wonderful view of the Sea of Cortez. For lunch, I had a hamburger which was only about twice the meal I really needed and Anita chose the catch-of-the-day—red snapper, it turned out—on a bun with jalepeno sauce.  She offered me a bite and it was wonderful, as good a fish sandwich as I’ve ever tasted.

By the time we finished lunch the wind coming in from the Sea of Cortez had picked up quite a bit, and it was an even bet whether the parasol over our table would take flight or not.  Fearless as ever, we braved the warm tropical wind to claim a pair of chaise lounges in the shade, where we dozed until the sun had moved enough to find us again.  We took this as a sign from God that we should get in the pool, which we did just in time to watch a parasol tumble over on top of a woman sunbathing by the pool.  She was unhurt, but it served to make for one exciting moment in an otherwise blissfully lazy afternoon.  Anita got a drink at the bar and we bobbed around aimlessly for an hour or so before climbing out and heading to our room.

I noticed that the people along the way to our room were all cheerful and smiling as if enjoying some bit of private humor.  It didn’t occur to me that I might have contributed to their mirth until Anita turned to ask me a question and instantly dissolved into a fit of giggles.  She gestured helplessly in the direction of a mirror and I turned to behold the medusa of ancient legend.  Chlorine, it seems, does strange things to my curls.  My hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but the inevitable multitude of stray hairs now stood almost directly out from my head like great sinuous snakes.  Anita took a picture.  Thanks, wench.  You just wait…

Later, freshly showered and with my hair once again firmly under control, I drug Anita to bed and we re-consumated our marriage, just to be sure.  One can never have too much consummation, I say.  The only downside we have found to sex after marriage is that it’s no longer a sin, so this time we had vowed to try harder.  It took a couple hours, but in the end we managed not only to sin, but to break the laws of forty-three states and the District of Columbia, as well as violate two international treaties and the Geneva Convention.  Afterward I curled up with my bride, pleased (if exhausted) and napped until the evening.

When we finally roused ourselves that night, we picked up our rental car and drove into town for dinner at Las Palmas, a seafood restaraunt on the beach in Cabo San Lucas. Perhaps the creepiest thing about our trip was the wholly unnatural sight of a brand-new VW bug.  Personally, I had never driven a bug which was younger than ’72 or so, and to see one fresh from the factory screwed with my head in a big way.  Driving itself in Mexico is not as hard as I had feared, once you learn the trick.  You must let go of your preconceived notions of driving, let go of everything you learned in driver’s ed and get in touch with your inner, screaming, terrified child.  You must trust your feelings.  In short, you must use The Force.  There is, however, one thing you must always remember:

“Watch out for the caus,” said the helpful woman at the rental desk.

“Um, the what?” I asked, wondering what strange Mexican road hazzard a “caus” might be.

“The caus, senor, dey come out on the road to eat the grass.”

Oh.

Part of our bribe for sitting through the timeshare presentation at Los Cojones Grande (or whatever the place’s name was) had been a fifty-dollar gift certificate to this restaurant which we used up with gusto.  Shrimp and steak seem to be big in Cabo, so I tried them out.  Not bad, but I found that I had been spoiled by the Palmilla.  The big excitement of the evening was me trying to remember how to get the bug into reverse while slowly rolling down a blind alley toward a wooden picket fence and the ocean beyond.  We called it a night early and crawled into bed after setting the alarm for 5:30am.  Tomorrow morning is fishing…