Cabo, Day 3

So, the batteries in my camera died. I'll have to post pics later, after I get them from Keiko, Greg, et al.

A quick recap of the day:

1) reading on the balcony listening to the waves
2) reading in a hammock down on the beach (finished Sundiver)
3) 90 second swim in the super-cold ocean water
4) lunch, including margaritas
5) reading by the infinity pool (started the 2nd book in the series: Startide Rising. It's even better!)
6) swimming in the infinity pool
7) napping at the infinity pool
8) get ready for wedding ceremony
9) attend wedding ceremony
10) reception cocktail-margaritas for an hour or so
11) dinner, screwed up my part of group speech (never did play well in groups)
12) danced from 930pm-230am without stopping except for 5 min while they cut the cake

All in all, a pretty good day.

Here are a few observations about doing your vacation in a super-fancy resort:

1) Whatever outrageous price you happen to be paying for the room ($625/night in this case), you should plan to rack up about 50% of that in daily incidentals. EVERYTHING costs something, and what that something is, is roughly 3-10 times what you would pay for it elsewhere.

2) Being at a resort like this means you will have to work pretty hard to get out of it; indeed, we're only leaving the resort because we're shifting to the Westin (which is 1/3 the cost) for our last 2 days. It's a combination of the resort being pleasantly awesome, and the ever-present undercurrent of holy-shit-for-what-I'm-paying-I'm-going-to-squeeze-every-last-drop-of-fun-out-of-this.

The implication is, if you actually want to see the country you're in, this is not the way to do it. As it happens, there's not much country to see other than this resort; we're at the bottom of the Baja peninsula and pretty much everything here exists because white people decided to build something, and needed other people to do all the work (starting with the Spanish, who founded the place).

3) Because of the cost of labor here, the ratio of random serving people to guests is at least 1-1, maybe even higher. The resort is organized in small buildings, and each building has its own butler, maid, etc. If you don't put on the privacy sign, there is someone coming in and out of your room like every 10 minutes in an effort to be servile. Turn down your bed, make sure there's fresh fruit in the bowl, give you more towels, whatever.

We quickly put on the privacy sign and have left it on constantly since, since neither one of us needs any of the shit they're wanting to give us, and neither of us particularly cares for people to be wandering in and out. But it's really caused our poor butler a lot of consternation; he even came up to us yesterday afternoon and somewhat plaintively asked if we were *really* sure we didn't need our beds turned down. I think he's worried he and his buddy the dayshift butler are not going to get tipped.

Now we're off to the day-after breakfast, and then we shift over to the Westin, where I think there is also a very nice pool. More reading! I haven't done this much nothing in decades, and while I don't think this is really the way I most like to vacation, I *am* enjoying this very much. And we're very proud of Alex & Rose, who are, in some really weird, ineffable way, perfect for each other...