We got up and got ourselves to the wedding day-after breakfast, which was predictably awesome. Custom-made omelettes, pastries, fruit, juice- everything I'd ever eat for breakfast anyway. Alex looked like he'd gone to by by 10pm, while Rose looked like she'd gone to bed last week. Ed & Alison never made it at all. Typical Ed.
Thus, we found ourselves back at the room by 1030 already packed when Greg mentioned that he'd asked for a late checkout, and been given 2pm. Immediately, I was on the phone with the front desk getting a similar deal for us. And that gave us another 3 hours to lay on the awesome futon thingy on the balcony, listen to waves, read, and watch bright yellow tropical birds hanging out in the tree. Pure bliss.
Finally, in the mid-afternoon we said goodbye to palace life and went to go stay at a normal hotel, which had the advantage of being basically 1/4th the cost. Here are a few pics of the Westin, which when it was built was the premier resort in Cabo:
The architecture is interesting, if a little weird. This is the building we stayed in.
This pic is from the orange building in the 1st pic.
No crazy-comfy futon, and the glass doors have "Westin" printed on them, which is weird, but the view is still pretty good.
Getting ready to head down to the pool. Shifting hotels has interfered with the afternoon sunbathing routine we'd established.
The thing about staying in a place like the Palmilla is that your baseline for what constitutes "nice" gets all messed up. The Westin felt shabby, but really was fine, except for the part about no free internet access. The internet was like a million dollars a second, which is why I'm updating this blog now, instead of the next day like I did at the Palmilla. But everything else was as nice as it could be without luxury-suite-like rooms and an army of attendants.
In the evening, we headed up to San Jose del Cabo. It took me a while to figure out the many different things the word "Cabo" can refer to. Basically, Baja California is an 800-mile long strip of scrub desert, at the bottom of which are gray whale mating areas, and 2 tourist cities: San Jose del Cabo, and Cabo San Lucas. Collectively they are referred to as Los Cabos. All the fancy resorts are pretty much located along the beach in between the 2 cities, which are maybe 20 miles apart. The Palmilla and the Westin are located almost in the middle. When people say they're going to "Cabo", probably they mean they're flying into Los Cabos airport, and then staying at some resort between the 2 cities.
The journey to San Jose del Cabo represented our first real foray into the local area. At the Palmilla, there was just no incentive to ever leave. So it was nice to actually get out and see stuff. We wandered around the town square, poking into shops with typical tourist crap in them, and then eventually had a very nice dinner at a local restaurant, whose name is already long lost to my memory...
The church in the town square. Charming Spanish colonial architecture- a great place to spend a couple hrs in quiet contemplation after a long day of spreading pestilence & death among the native population.
Keiko caught on camera publicly groping me at dinner.
After a few hours of wandering around town, we retreated to the Westin to rest up before another long day of sunbathing...
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