Sunday, December 9, 2018- Cabo San Lucas and San Juan del Cabo

Sunday, December 9, 2018- Cabo San Lucas and San Juan del Cabo   Ben awoke just as the ship was approaching Cabo San Lucas and the Land’s End formation El Arco de Cabo San Lucas.  It was still pre-dawn. The ship dropped anchor just inside the bay formed by Land’s End and the bottom of the Baja Peninsula as the sun rose in the east.  

The temperature had dropped to the lower 70’s and the humidity had also fallen dramatically, so it was quite comfortable to have our breakfast on the Aquavit Terrace on the stern of the ship as a constant stream of fishing and tourist boat streamed out of the harbor at Cabo San Lucas, and headed out to Land’s End and beyond.    

Our included land excursion was scheduled at 11AM, so Ben was able to work off some guilt in the fitness center before we had to get ready to board the tenders that would take us ashore.  

Our shore excursion loaded us up onto buses and took us from Cabo San Lucas Marina to San Juan del Cabo, an old city center about a half hour drive from the marina.  Viking really makes a big production over trying to get all the passenger groups organized (Line up two by two), and they are very considerate to make sure passengers aren’t left standing in the sun any longer than is absolutely necessary.  They also make quite the effort to accomodate the mobility restricted, who are mainstreamed into all of the excursion groups.  This means that none of the excursion groups can move any faster than the slowest and most disabled member.  While politically correct, this approach limits what a group can see in the time permitted. We wish that they would stratify excursion groups based on mobility and fitness so that each passenger can have an optimal experience, rather than a tedious or overly strenuous one.    

There are pharmacies that cater to tourists, advertising all manner of medications available without prescription. There is a chain of pharmacies with a particularly offensive bit of advertising for their Viagra.  

  Once we were disgorged from the buses in the square of San Juan del Cabo, our guide lead us to a jewelry store that would let us use their tiny bathrooms for free if we showed them our guide’s sticker, and then we had an hour to explore on our own.  There is a Catholic Church on the square, known for the tile artwork over the entry depicting it’s founding priest being dragged to his death on the streets of the city by the local indigenous people.  The church itself was conducting a Sunday Mass when we arrived.  The inside of the church was actually quite modest, and a bit run down. There were Christmas decorations on display in the square, and the weather was perfect.  However, San Juan del Cabo just didn’t seem to be all that exciting.  Wandering the streets, you find many of the same items being sold at many of the stores.  There were a few jewelry stores with some nice items for sale, but nothing was what you could consider a good buy, or something uniquely San Juan del Cabo.  The Dias Das Muertos merchandise is interesting to see, especially after having seen Disney’s Coco, but we really don’t need inventory for future garage sales.  We did find some luchadore masks, which would have been an amusing gift, but we couldn’t find anyone to give us a price, so we left empty handed.    

 

We did try our hand at some photography techniques the ship’s seminars have been teaching, and the town did provide some decent backdrops for our experiments.

 

The trip back to the ship got us to the Marina with time to explore a bit more, but since we had spent a couple of weeks in Cabo with our kids back in the mid 2000’s, there wasn’t much we really needed to or wanted to see.  We walked around the marina for a bit of exercise and then headed back to the ship.  

       

 

 

After returning to the ship, we had lunch and then a relaxing dip in the infinity pool, with an unbeatable view of Land’s End.        

Lobster Thermador was served in The Restaurant. They used a spiny lobster and picked the meat out of the tail and body. The meat was diced into chunks and then reconstituted with a rich sauce of egg yolks, cream and cheese in the shells.  While rich, it was not quite as satisfying as picking huge chunks of lobster meat from a New England lobster.

 

The Star Theater show featured all of the cruise director’s staff and performers doing a variety of duets. The Filipino club singers are particularly talented, but some of the other pieces performed by the Viking Vocalists and band were a bit off. Still, it was entertaining and you could tell they put a lot of effort in trying to entertain us.  Just not quite up to Princess standards, though.  

 

We finished off the evening watching a movie called “Searching”.  It was kind of creepy and featured a lot of social media presented in an unusual format.  It was unusual in that it starred a Korean family, and Deborah Messing playing a police detective- and psycho protective mom.  It really seems to advocate helicopter parenting. We’re glad it didn’t end as horribly as it might have.  It is nice to have the on-demand video system back up and running though.  And after 19 days, some Apple services are starting to be accessible, but still not working like they should.  Funny that a Cruise ship should be so reliant on software, and yet the software is so poorly written and buggy. 

 

We have two last sea days coming up as we work our way from Cabo San Lucas to San Diego.  We hope to see some whales and marine life.  We could see some whale watching boats just off El Arco following some whale spouts in the distance before we left Cabo, so maybe we’ll get lucky.