Cabo at night
Cabo San Lucas is more of a city than a town – the population is about 70,000 – but it still has a small-town feel. A small town with night clubs that are open until 6am. The thumping hip-hop rhythms carried well over the harbor to our hotel, but fortunately the balcony doors were tight enough to keep most of it out. We slept well.
Baja Junkie
We actually visited one of these night clubs during our stay – a rare late evening out for us. We chose Baja Junkie partly because it had one of the more interesting decors – dark, with neon lighting, completely open to the street – but mostly because we had met the owner, Chris, a 38-year-old ex-pat who was a lot of fun and a really nice guy. How nice? He gave me a very fine margarita, on the house. That’s my definition of nice.
Sparky and Jett at Baja Junkie
We went on Thursday night – Ladies Night. When I asked Chris which night was Men’s Night, he smiled and said “Thursday.”
Body shot
One of the special attractions of Ladies Night is a big wheel that a woman can spin. It contains a variety of activities for the lucky lady, including “body shot.” The idea of the body shot is that she lies on the bar, a shot of tequila is poured into her navel and the person of her choice gets to suck it up. The body shot that we witnessed was a very lithe 6′ 2″ miss who chose to have the shot consumed by her 6′ 1″ female companion. Amazon lesbians? Don’t know, but I couldn’t not watch.
Chris and yours truly
Being a tourist town, Cabo has many restaurants. However, as with the hotel, we were not impressed with the ones we sampled. The best of the lot was La Ricazon where we had a very fine meal on Wednesday. However, even La Ricazon was a mixed experience. They have two locations and we tried the other one on Thursday. Bad idea. Lousy service and disappointing food. So if you go to Cabo and decide to try La Ricazon, go to the downtown location, across the street from Baja Junkie.
The sidewalk bar at La Ricazon
The excellent La Ricazon onion rings
We also tried Hacienda el Coyote, one of the restaurants associated with the Playa Grande Resort. It gets great reviews and most people seem to really like it. I will say that our service was wonderful, but the food bordered on inedible. I had “Veracruz” fish, which turned out to be a whole fish – head and tail included – that was buried under a tomato sauce. I could barely taste the fish through the sauce. Jett had a ribeye which was very ordinary, except for the price. Neither of us finished our entrees. I had a flan for dessert and it was less than mediocre – too firm and the caramel was bitter. A very disappointing $100 meal.
The rest of the town is pretty much what you would expect of a major tourist destination. Lots of opportunities to buy trinkets. I did like the Cabo Harley Davidson shop which was unique among the Harley shops we have visited in that it had a restaurant.
Stroller at the Harley Biker’s Bar
We had lunch one day at Johnny Rocket’s which in no way is Mexican. However, it was a really hot day and the Rocket shake was very refreshing.
View from Johnny Rocket’s
My Rocket Burger
As with other tourist towns in Mexico, you can’t walk 10 feet without being offered Cuban cigars ($50 for 5, marked down to $20 when you start to walk away) that we almost certainly not Cuban, silver jewelry which almost certainly wasn’t silver and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to buy a timeshare. Just say no and enjoy the scenery as you walk along the harbor. Maybe you will get a glimpse of the sea lions.
Harbor walk
Sea lions in the harbor
There were many activities that did interest us but we didn’t partake in. Like the dolphin swim. We would have loved to swim with the dolphins again and the dolphin place was very close to our hotel, but it was also expensive – nearly $200 for a 40-minute swim.
The dolphin tank
The week ended on a down note. I, for the first time ever, got a touch of Montezuma’s Revenge – I was feeling very nauseous all day Friday and most of Saturday. By Sunday when we were due to leave, I was fully recovered, but Jett took over for me. She had the great misfortune of being unwell on the flight home. Not a great way to end a good week.
We liked Cabo, but we are unlikely to return. There are too many places we still want to see and too many place that we have been in Mexico that we like better.