los cabos, part the first
Feb. 18th, 2013 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishThe trouble with taking a vacation to write more is that being somewhere else doesn't magically make me not be me. Brain still fried, and not terribly interested in constructing coherent thoughts or stringing paragraphs together in a logical fashion. So here's a fragmented travelogue.
Los Cabos are two resort towns at the southern tip of Baja California. Cabo San Lucas is supposedly more of a party town; San José del Cabo is more laid-back. Being more laid-back sorts ourselves, we're staying in SJ.
YVR: still my favorite airport, still stupidly expensive, still worth it in cases where I have more money than time (so, most of them). We had a brief layover at Phoenix, which is wholly nondescript, and then flew into SJD, the airport that serves much of Baja California Sur. SJD... lacks character. Painted cinderblock walls, standard black pleather airport chairs, high ceilings and glass doors. Utterly forgettable at ten PM.
"Incomplete" is my main impression of SJ in general. A couple of streets have been dug up and (I assume) are being repaved. The locals eagerly court any gringos that happen to walk past their shops, which might be less overwhelming if there were more than a handful of turistas. (It's the very start of tour season, I believe.) A number of resorts on the highway between SJ and SL have been abandoned half-constructed, as has a large concrete edifice at the end of the SL marina. Even the desert landscape looks unfinished to my Appalachian-trained eye, as though they haven't yet gotten around to filling in the grass and trees around the brush.
The weather. My god, the weather. Or rather the lack thereof, it has been utterly cloudless and low-twenties ("mid-seventies") the entire time we've been here. (It may get as low as eighteen at night, or as high as twenty-five at midday.) Every morning we've been saying to each other "Hey, it's kinda nice out today," as though it weren't going to be nice out every day. It's a nice change from the unrelenting grey back north but I don't know how much more of it I can stand. I am also glad we didn't come during the summer. Right now it's pretty much perfect for me, if a bit too bright.
Yesterday we went out to SL, which is, as advertised, more... more like Key West, or like the boardwalk at Ocean City. We rode a boat out to the beach at the very tip of Baja, and laughed at the seals and pelicans and oohed at the frigatebirds. Today we splashed in the pool, and watched a glassblower for an hour or so. Perhaps there will be beachwalking this evening. And tomorrow I think we're going up to the Cabo Pulmo national park to see about some snorkeling.
In the meantime I have a handful of postcards and a lot of email to deal with, so I guess I'll post this now.
Los Cabos are two resort towns at the southern tip of Baja California. Cabo San Lucas is supposedly more of a party town; San José del Cabo is more laid-back. Being more laid-back sorts ourselves, we're staying in SJ.
YVR: still my favorite airport, still stupidly expensive, still worth it in cases where I have more money than time (so, most of them). We had a brief layover at Phoenix, which is wholly nondescript, and then flew into SJD, the airport that serves much of Baja California Sur. SJD... lacks character. Painted cinderblock walls, standard black pleather airport chairs, high ceilings and glass doors. Utterly forgettable at ten PM.
"Incomplete" is my main impression of SJ in general. A couple of streets have been dug up and (I assume) are being repaved. The locals eagerly court any gringos that happen to walk past their shops, which might be less overwhelming if there were more than a handful of turistas. (It's the very start of tour season, I believe.) A number of resorts on the highway between SJ and SL have been abandoned half-constructed, as has a large concrete edifice at the end of the SL marina. Even the desert landscape looks unfinished to my Appalachian-trained eye, as though they haven't yet gotten around to filling in the grass and trees around the brush.
The weather. My god, the weather. Or rather the lack thereof, it has been utterly cloudless and low-twenties ("mid-seventies") the entire time we've been here. (It may get as low as eighteen at night, or as high as twenty-five at midday.) Every morning we've been saying to each other "Hey, it's kinda nice out today," as though it weren't going to be nice out every day. It's a nice change from the unrelenting grey back north but I don't know how much more of it I can stand. I am also glad we didn't come during the summer. Right now it's pretty much perfect for me, if a bit too bright.
Yesterday we went out to SL, which is, as advertised, more... more like Key West, or like the boardwalk at Ocean City. We rode a boat out to the beach at the very tip of Baja, and laughed at the seals and pelicans and oohed at the frigatebirds. Today we splashed in the pool, and watched a glassblower for an hour or so. Perhaps there will be beachwalking this evening. And tomorrow I think we're going up to the Cabo Pulmo national park to see about some snorkeling.
In the meantime I have a handful of postcards and a lot of email to deal with, so I guess I'll post this now.