Cabo San Lucas

A Mingle vacation would never be complete without a few unplanned mishaps. However, we Mingles like to look on the bright side and embrace these events whole- heartedly, since more then likely, they provide a lot of color and character for the entire trip. And, without these misadventures, what then my dear friends, would I have to write about?

Before I continue with the good and the bad (from here on known as “funny”), I would like to caveat this by announcing – that we had a fantastic time. That is no lie, Mr. Mingle planned a wonderful trip, and I would go back to Cabo San Lucas in a heartbeat – it was very, very difficult to come home after the nice time that we had. And now…let me take you back to the beginning…

Mr. Mingle planned a 4-night, 5-day trip for the two of us to celebrate our first year anniversary in Cabo San Lucas. We love to travel together, but we also appreciate good deals and he found one. Two things made our trip less expensive:

1) We transferred through Houston (thus adding 5-7 hours onto both our travel days)
2) Our hotel was half-built.

Okay, so the second might sound a little disarming, but we were fully aware of this before we arrived – he had checked out all reviews, and they were positive, despite the construction. What they lacked in building, they made up for in service. The detours through Houston were the biggest downfall of the trip. Not because we were in the air longer, or had layovers in Houston – because we can amuse ourselves and laugh through those - but because they lost my luggage. When we got to Cabo Thursday night, we watched them unload all the bags (it was a small plane) and we watched all the bags get taken away and the luggage cart shut down. Mr. Mingle’s arrived, however mine did not. I was immediately distressed by this because I had nothing to wear except for the clothes I had on and almost everything in the bag was brand new so I thought I’d lost it forever without ever having the chance to wear my new clothes.

On the ride to the hotel I was very sad, which made me even more upset, because at this point I should have been happy, after all, we were in Cabo San Lucas! As I said, we knew the hotel was half-built, so we were not surprised when the taxi drove off into a dirt road, past a half-structure and dropped us off in front of the finished portion by the beach. The lobby was one of the things not built yet, so instead, we checked in at a desk located in the restaurant. There we were greeted by a lovely woman who had good news – the airline had already called and said they found my suitcase which would be delivered late the following day. At that point both of us resisted the urge to leap over the table and hug the woman. Then she said, “I have bad news and good news…” oh..here it comes… “The bad news is we have run out of the studio rooms that you reserved, but the good news is we have given you a free upgrade to a one bedroom suite.” At which point, we were both confused about what the bad news was... “what does that mean?” we asked. That meant that we got a one bedroom suite larger then our apartment, complete with a kitchen, laundry room, two bathrooms and a balcony overlooking the beach. Suite? Sweet!!!

On Friday morning I woke up and was reading on a lounge chair on the balcony while Mr. Mingle continued to sleep. I was enjoying the view, the ocean breeze, and the construction noises in the background when I became aware of a clicking sound that seemed to be getting closer. I turned around and to my surprise found two Mexican construction workers hanging outside my 6th floor balcony hoisting themselves up the building. I quickly departed the balcony, but not without first getting a picture.

Since I didn’t have any of my beachwear, we killed the morning by attending a time share presentation for the place we were staying in and got free breakfast and some other stuff out of it, as well as discounts on our future activities for the weekend. However, we stuck to our guns and did not purchase anything even though they pushed and pushed. Later, I borrowed a shirt and shorts from Mr. Mingle and we walked along the beach to have lunch at The Office, which was supposed to be a fun place. It was obviously located in the party section of the beach. Everyone was tanned and gorgeous and walking around in their little suits with drinks in hand. I felt out of place wearing my husband’s clothes and not feeling glamorous in the least, not to mention we were, by far, the whitest couple on the beach. No worries though – it was just great to be there. My suitcase arrived around 3:00 so we quickly changed into swimsuits and went to the pool complete with a pirate ship in the middle.


On Saturday we had reservations for a snorkeling trip for the afternoon. We went to the wharf to catch our boat and discovered another really nice place in Cabo. The wharf area was beautiful and full of restaurants and fun places to hang out. We caught our boat which came with an open bar and a promise of lunch later in the afternoon. We had a long drive out to the snorkeling beach – probably 45 minutes or so, and I quickly realized that this was going to be a tough day for me. I stopped drinking after one beer when I started to feel seasick. I have never experienced such seasickness in my life… I kept praying that we would get to our destination before I got sick, and luckily we did. I was enjoying the snorkeling and being in the cool water, but still feeling a little queasy, until I accidentally swallowed a large amount of salt water which sent me over the edge. Let’s just say it was unpleasant and I won’t explain further, but luckily no one was around except for Mr. Mingle who was far enough away from me not to get hit… ok, ok, really no more. After that episode I thought I felt better and had some lunch before we took off again for the long journey home. But alas, it wasn’t to be. Some pirates say “yo-ho” when on a boat, but this Mingle said “heave-ho” right over the side. Oh so sick, and unpleasant. I could not wait to get back to dry land. Finally we made it back and somehow I was able to stand enough to get off the boat. It took me awhile to get my strength back, but a little ice cream and a nap helped immensely. The topper to this whole boat trip was the fact that the spray-on sunblock we had was not applied too evenly so the tops of my legs and knees got burnt, and my back looks like a jigsaw puzzle with the red patches asymmetrically appearing around strap lines.

That night I felt much better and was able to enjoy our best dinner out of the whole trip. Mr. Mingle had made special reservations at a boutique hotel called Casa Rafael’s and it was wonderful. The service was impeccable – I think there were 4 or 5 people waiting on us at any one time. There was also a music group playing – a small mariachi band, but with only guitars – no horns. There was a 13 yearold boy in this group who looked like he had been dragged along by his father to occasionally accompany the group with sound effects. All of a sudden, this kid broke out singing with the operatic voice that stunned us – we were amazed. He was also very cheesy and really hammed it up and we enjoyed his performance immensely.

Sunday was our busiest day. First we started off by getting massages and then we rented a sea kayak for two and kayaked out to a place called Lover’s Beach which was quite far away and only accessible by water. We were about a third of the way there when we realized they had sent us out without life jackets. “Oh well, Mingle is a good swimmer” we thought, and carried on. We made it out to the beach with no trouble until we got caught in a mini whirlpool trying to pull up to the beach, but fortunately we didn’t tip and the next wave came and pushed our boat to shore. We walked around this beach for a bit and checked out both sides – the Pacific side and the bay-side. Then we kayaked back. We took a quick break in the pool at a nearby resort where we found a swim-up bar and enjoyed margaritas and ice cream. (As a side note – these do NOT go well together). After this, it was off for parasailing! I have wanted to go parasailing for 14 years, and I was finally going to get my chance. First we were picked up from the beach by a taxi boat which then transferred us to a ski boat in the middle of the bay from which we would parasail. Some other people were already there and while one of them was up in the air we heard a loud crack and then a funny sound. We soon discovered that the fiber glass on the side of the boat had literally cracked in two places and a 4 foot piece of it was flapping around in the breeze. The parasailer came down without incident, but we were worried about the fact that it appeared we had a large hole in our boat. Their boss came out to check the boat out and deemed it unsafe to continue (thank goodness – because I wanted off), and then were put back in a water taxi and transferred to yet another ski boat. Finally I had my chance to parasail, and it was truly amazing. I thought I’d be really frightened, but once I was up there it was so peaceful. They drove us around the bay and I just floated in the air while taking in all the sites, Cabo Bay, our hotel, sea lion rock, the arch, Lover’s Beach…all from a bird’s eye view. I’m so grateful I finally got to go parasailing, and I would do it again.

After Mr. Mingle got his chance to parasail we then went back to our hotel where we relaxed for the rest of the late afternoon by our pool, and then finally into town for one last dinner.

This was an extremely long narrative and if you have read this far – thank you! I had every intention of posting pictures, but am currently having technical difficulties – so those are to come. Our trip was not without its blunders, but as I said in the beginning, all in all it was fantastic. It was so nice to be on vacation together, relaxed and away from work, if only we could have stayed for another week. Mr. Mingle has set the bar very high for our next anniversary.