Adventures in Cabo San Lucas

Cabo San Lucas (really Los Cabos – including San Jose del Cabo) is where we round the tip of the Baja peninsula and head into the Sea of Cortez.  Stopping in Cabo San Lucas was a nice (and fun) break from the long passage down from California.  If you haven’t been to Cabo San Lucas, it is a pretty much a tourist mecca!

Everything in Cabo San Lucas is catered to the vacation crowd.  Although we may look like we are on vacation, we really aren’t (or we would be broke pretty quickly and have to end this little adventure).  So, we did our best to take part in some of the fun, craziness of Cabo San Lucas without going too overboard.

We spent the first three nights at Marina Cabo San Lucas, which was nice for us to be able to utilize the water, showers, laundry, etc.  But then we headed out of the harbor to anchor the next three nights in front of the white, sandy beaches where the hotels line the beach.  Our cruising guide books told us to expect to be charged to anchor, but apparently that wasn’t the case.  Nice!

On Wednesday, after finishing our chores (laundry and boat cleaning) and cleaning up for the day, we decided to head out for dinner to a local restaurant we had seen a few blocks off the main strip earlier in the day.  Unfortunately, we didn’t take very good note of where the restaurant was and ended up wandering the town for a bit.  It was getting late for dinner, so we stopped at one of the restaurants by the marina, where Mike got the special with two grilled lobster tails at a great price!

After dinner we decided to check out El Squid Roe, which is a cheesy club, but definitely entertaining people watching.   You can see that we got into the spirit of things…

On Thursday, we decided to reprovision the boat as our fridge (other than the fish in the freezer) was getting lean.  We took at taxi to the Walmart, which actually had a great selection of produce and other items including homemade, warm corn tortillas.  We got a pretty good haul!  (Side bar: I never shopped at Walmart at home.  This was a lot nicer than the ones I have seen in the US.)

We had gotten some recommendations from friends to check out The Office, so we headed there for dinner. It is a great outdoor place right on the water.  We were lucky to get a table right up front on the sand in perfect time for the sun going down.  They put on quite a show with mariachis, a luchador (wrestler) as MC, some traditional dancers, a pinata for the kids and some silly games on stage.  The food and margaritas were great too!

Our next adventure was on Friday when we decided we needed to fill our propane tanks.  (We have two 20 lb refillable tanks that are mounted to the stern rail of the boat.  We use propane for the stove, oven and grill.)   We stopped at the marina office to ask where we could the tanks filled.  Apparently the taxis near the marina charge “tourist” prices, so the office recommended that we take a bus to the Soriana (local grocery) and then pick up a “local taxi” to take us to Caligas where we could refill the tanks.

We had to walk a few blocks with the tanks to find the buses.  (I’m glad Mike did most of the heavy lifting with the tanks.  Those things are heavy!) But, we got on the bus and found the Soriana.  We bargained with a taxi driver to take us to Caligas, wait for the tanks to be filled and take us back to the marina for $200 MP (a little more than $10 US!)

We then got the boat ready to leave the marina and anchor out at the beach. We had a bit of difficulty getting out of the slip as the wind kept pushing the bow of the boat the wrong way, but eventually we made it out of there!

We followed the recommended anchorage in Charlie’s Charts (one of our guide books) and found a great spot in 20-30 ft of water about 200 yds off the beach.  The beach is a public beach where there is a break in the line of hotels that dot the coast.  The sandy shelf extends quite a way off the shore before dropping off to deeper water.

Here is picture of Adagio at anchor with the iconic rocks in the background.

And here is our view from the boat at sunset.  Not too bad!

 

It was afternoon by the time that we dropped anchor and pretty busy all around us with jet skis, parasailing boats, water taxis, etc.  We waited until later in the afternoon until the traffic died down (mainly the jet skis!) to put the paddleboards in the water. Not a bad paddle to shore, but it was still a bit windy and choppy.  We walked down the beach and checked out a couple of the resorts before paddling back to the boat.

On Saturday we dropped the dinghy in the water to see the arch and the rock formations.  We tied the dinghy up near Lover’s Beach, which is a neat beach in between the rock formations where you can walk through and over to the Pacific side.  We put our snorkel gear on and did some snorkeling and free diving off Lover’s Beach.  We saw lots of angelfish,  pufferfish and triggerfish!

 

 

Very cool to swim among the rocks, but you really had to watch out for all of the water taxis showing people around.  A really large cruise ship showed up this morning, so there were a lot of people out.

Later in the afternoon, we paddled to shore again and wandered into one of the resorts.  We had some pina coladas and got a great shot of Adagio from the resort!

We did some more paddling and swimming on Sunday before taking off Monday after breakfast for San Jose del Cabo.  Monday morning there were THREE cruise ships that arrived, so we knew it was time to go. We had a nice sail to San Jose del Cabo, but more on that next time.  Still working on the sailing videos, and stay tuned for adventures in bicycling in San Jose del Cabo!

~katie