What you don't say about your holiday
We must have looked mighty scruffy and bedraggled because even our best efforts to play it cool and act like guests of the Solmar Hotel were met with, at best, skeptical stares, at worst, downright suspicion. The bellhop granted us reluctant permission to enter, provided we make our way to the help desk with an escort. That was the sum total of our experience of Cabo San Lucas.
Picturesque as the postcards may be, we had been warned. First, by Roverto, a Cabo native.
“It’s all...” he struggled for the word, “like a wall of smoke.”
“A smoke screen?” Tim offered.
“That’s it,” said Roverto. “Cabo’s a shit hole.”
If that wasn’t definitive enough, Dave (known locally as Lobo Grande, or Big Wolf), the tall, friendly, laid back gringo we met on the beach in Todos Santos, had his own deterrent: “You’re going past Cabo?” he asked, “Oh man — shut your eyes.” But then he acquiesced with helpful advice and a few handy tourist maps to help us navigate. This was just going to be a drive-by-shooting of sorts: get to the beach, hike to the Land’s End arch, take a photo and get out. The quickest way? Park in said resort, saunter in like a guest and bee-line for la playa.
No such luck -- courtesy of the hyper-vigilant security in bellhop garb. We would be shown to the front desk, begrudgingly inquire after their rates, agree to see a room, wander past sock-wearing sunburnt tourists lounging next to one of the resort's two pools, walk up a few flights of stairs, scoff (silently) and be tempted to swipe a bar of Solmar soap from the bathroom, just to prove the hotel right: we were indeed as dirty and as unworthy of being their patrons as we looked.
Truthfully, I wouldn’t have paid fifty pesos to stay there, nevermind a hundred and fifty USD. As I glimpsed the sea over the top of the pool and the cabaña restaurant emitting Jamaican reggae, sweeping around for a quick panorama on Cabo’s beachfront skyline — mansions, hotels — tottering atop the beautiful blanched rocks, it made me consider the old bible school song:
Don’t build your house on the sandy land.
Don’t build it too near the shore.
Oh it might look kinda nice but you’ll have to build it twice...
You’ve got to build your house upon the Rock!
Make a sure foundation on a solid spot!
Even our best efforts at something lasting and good are shabby and ill-conceived. Inspired by our greed rather than our gratitude.
That’s all to say that Roverto and Lobo were right, and Tim was right to want to heed their advice. I reasoned it wasn’t too much of a cost if it was a dud — just a few miles out of the way, a few hours wasted. It was both, served with a little ramekin of second-class citizenship on the side.
If I could do it over again I'd skip the traffic and the hassle of Cabo, though sometimes it’s worth reminding yourself why you do what you do — and don’t do what you don’t. Leave the resort towns for quick-fix, in-n-out holiday makers, persuaded that ease and convenience and whatever fun money can buy equates to a relaxing getaway. I’ll take a tent on a hidden beach any day. A fresh caught fish on the fire and a freshly-wrangled coconut.
As we reached the outskirts of San Jose, Cabo’s next door neighbour, passing the final resorts before the end of town and the dirt road, I spied some toddling, sweaty sun-worn tourists disembarking from their horse ride in the midday heat — just a walk across the parking lot from the resort, of course.
“Imagine having to try and convince yourself you’re having fun on vacation, like that,” I said to Tim, with, admittedly, a note of judgment.
“Ugh,” he shuddered, as if at a bad smell.
“Ugh,” I replied, knowingly.
And we carried on down the dirt road with the bluest blue waters of the Sea of Cortez just up ahead, and the beach at Cabo Pulmo all to ourselves.
