Cabo Wabo

We took a 5-day trip to Cabo at the end of November, 2006.  I had long heard stories about the top notch beaches, immaculate fairways, and great restaurants and clubs…so we were pretty excited to leave the gray weather behind us to head south and consume lots of fruity drinks.

Cabo definitely did not disappoint. 

We arrived Saturday shortly after noon, made our way thru customs and claimed our bags.  We successfully navigated thru the 486 guys pushing timeshares, and managed to cram into an airport shuttle.  The shuttle system was surprisingly efficient – there were a bunch of large vans waiting just outside the main airport building; they quickly loaded a bunch of us gringos into a van and we headed south to Cabo.  We paid $14/each for the ride to our hotel (Sheraton Hacienda Del Mar).  While it seemed kinda steep at the time, in hindsight it was actually a pretty good deal, as we paid much more for taxi rides to and from Cabo during the rest of the trip.

We were pretty impressed with the Sheraton Hacienda Del Mar.  It is not the most exquisite of resorts in the Corridor – no one would mistake it for Palmilla or Las Ventanas – however, it did have a lot of things going for it: a great beach, a bunch of really nice pools and hot tubs, an attentive service staff, and a pretty unique ambiance.  Tho we didn’t bring Kass with us, we definitely would next time, as the grounds were very kid friendly.

We headed to Sammy Hagar’s infamous Cabo Wabo rest/bar for dinner/drinks on Sat night (you have to do it at least once, right?)  Dinner was good, tho the ceviche was the only thing we had that was truly noteworthy.  After dinner we headed downstairs to the bar where we proceeded to consume our fair share of tequila.  Was a good time, no doubt, tho I don’t think I’ll be headed back there if I make the trek to Cabo again – one too many Poison/Hagar/ACDC songs…and yes, the place did go wild when they got around to playing “I Can’t Drive 55”.

Slept in very late on Sunday… “breakfast in bed” was more like “mid-afternoon snack in bed”.  Made our way to the pool, drank a pina colada, knocked out a couple hundred pages of the new Grisham novel, which, incidentally, is a decent pool-side read.  Later that evening we headed to “C”, Charlie Trotter’s haughty-taughty restaurant at The One and Only Palmilla.  Dropped $250 on dinner for 2 (without a bottle of wine).  Service was unbelievable.  Presentation was out of this world.  Food was decent.  My wife ordered the parrot fish and several seafood appetizers and she said they were all fabulous.  I ordered the New York steak – the portion couldn’t have been smaller, and definitely could have been warmer.  Gotta love spending that kind of $$ and leaving the restaurant hungry.  From “C” we took a taxi into Cabo.  Met up with a friend at the Jungle Bar and made our way to El Squid Roe.  It quickly became clear to me that El Squid Roe is sort of the epicenter of night life in Cabo.  3 story dance floor, good energy, good music – we had a blast.

I got up relatively early on Monday so that I could make my 8:30am tee time at the Desert Course at Cabo Del Sol.  The Desert Course is the less expensive of the two courses (the Desert Course runs $220, the Ocean Course runs $350) but folks I talked to said that it is in better shape than the Ocean course.  A couple of triple bogies killed my score – I ended up with an 87 from the back tees.  While I golfed, my wife went for a spa treatment at the Hacienda.  She said the massage was decent, but the room/ambiance etc. weren’t quite as nice as she would have liked.  After golf and spa, we spent Monday afternoon on the Hacienda beach.  Air temp was 85 degrees; water temp was 85 degrees.  Heaven.

We went into Cabo again on Monday night to get some authentic Mexican food at a restaurant called “Mi Casa”.  Was a really unbelievable meal.  We started with sopes and ceviche.  I had the mole poblano for dinner.  Add a few Cadillac margaritas and some live mariachis, and it may have been the best 2 hours of the entire trip.  If you go to Cabo, you need to go to Mi Casa for dinner at least once. 

Slept in a bit on Tuesday morning and then packed up our stuff.  Headed to the gym for a workout – the gym at the Hacienda was really nice with lots of state of the art equipment.  Grabbed some lunch and then spent a few hours on the beach before my better half had to leave for the airport.  I then made my way to the Fiesta Americana, where I had a conference to attend on Tuesday night and all day Wednesday. 

I had one more day in Cabo after the conference.  I chose to spend most of it poolside at the Fiesta Americana.  The Fiesta is also a really nice resort – definitely a different feel than the Hacienda – the Fiesta felt much more like the type of modern resort that you’d find on Arizona or some other city in Southwest US .  The one knock against the Fiesta was the fact that they had a lot of construction on the hill above the resort, so instead of enjoying sounds of the ocean, I (and all others at the resort) endured the less-than-pleasant pounding of jackhammers for most of the day.  Headed to the airport Thursday afternoon sporting a little bit of a tan and feeling pretty well rested – and almost not dreading the fact that in less than 17 hours I’d be sitting in my cube back at work. 

I’d imagine we’ll return to Cabo again – after all, it has a lot to offer, is relatively affordable, and is pretty accessible from CA.