So, first order of business is getting a cell phone. Unfortunately, the USB A-B cord I brought wasn’t the one that came with my 5600, so for some reason it wasn’t charging the phone! D’oh! So I spent Tuesday wandering around Cabo in a few stores looking for a recharger. They don’t sell the 5600 in Mexico, but they do sell the Motorola V3, which in theory uses the same charger. I found one at a Telmel store just north of the Hard Rock Cafe, but it didn’t seem to want to charge the phone. I did some quick math… the charger would be $15, and a SIM card would be $22 (US… it’s currently 10-1 pesos to dollars, so I’ll let you do the math) — so $37, and no guarantee that an hour would charge the phone (battery appeared totally drained, so I couldn’t just see the plugged-in icon). Alternatively, I could buy a Motorola C115 for $40 with the SIM as well. So I went for the phone (and now I need to figure out how to unlock it… heh). The phone is on the Amigo pay-as-you-go plan for Telcel, and comes with 100 pesos for the first three months At the Plasa Paradiso (I think that’s the right spelling… it’s a new big mall in town) I bought an extra 100 peso card and then a Ladatel pay-phone card. It’s the cheapest way to call the US, at $0.50 a minute. I thought they’d work in the hotel pay-phones (at the Finisterra), but they only accept the pricier Hello cards ($1.00 a minute). We haven’t used it yet, but it’s $10 for 20 minutes, so we’ll probably spend some time with that later on. Anyway, more on phones later…
** Update **
Turns out the Motorola V3 Charger doesn’t work… at least when I got home and plugged the phone into the Audiovox one, I started seeing the power light immediately. Never saw it with Moto, so likely it isn’t quite what we want.