Gotta eat something, right? Well, here’s our quick list of places to eat. Quality ratings are 0-3 stars with *** being best and 0 being something to avoid, and price ratings are a rough estimate of how much dining for two will cost (in US dollars, including 10% tax and 15% tip). Distance is from the Finisterra, map to come:

• Blue Fin, nice restaurant at the Finisterra. OK, and pricey for the area. Go if you’re staying there and don’t feel like walking or taking a cab into town. **, $125.
• Whale Watcher, nice bar at the Finisterra. Happy hour (2 for 1) from 4-6, OK but pricey appetizers. Go there if you’re staying and want to keep drinking from 4-6, but otherwise nothing too special. Nice view of the Pacific, but you’re probably used to that from your room if you’re at the Finisterra. *, $40.
• La Palapa, pool bar at the Finisterra. Slow service, which is surprising considering the waiters there all work for just tips. Happy hour from 2-4, which is 2 for 1 drinks. If you’re there, you’ll probably spend some bucks here. Swim-up bar is a lot of fun. **, $30 + $15 per hour while you’re drinking.
• Romeo Y Julieta, Italian, entrance to Pedregal (apparently a high-rent neighborhood). Don’t go here. The food is pretty good actually, and prices are comparable to other Italian places (such as the Galleon, which is at the base of the Finisterra, across from the Marina). But they’ll pitch you for a time share while you’re there. Bah. 0 (AVOID!), $80.
• Mi Casa, Mexican, another couple blocks up the street from Romeo Y Julietas. Really good, authentic Mexican cuisine. Open atrium dining room (so you can see the night sky), prices aren’t too bad either. Didn’t like it as much as last time we came, but I’d still go again. ***, $80
• Pancho’s, Mexican. Corner of Hidalgo and Zapata, kinda close to Mi Casa (2 streets over and down). Probably the best Mexican we had there. It’s run by an ex-pat out of California and his wife who decided to retire early in Cabo. To fund his love of tequila, he opened a restaurant. Reasonably prices too. ***, 60
• Margaritaville, in the Marina. OK food, but far too expensive. However, service was good. Also turned out for lunch, instead of the 380 peso coconut shrimp plate I got the 165 peso shrimp plate appetizer — which still had 6 shrimp and stuffed me. The guy owned up to it and corrected it… so he got a big tip for chopping the price of my meal in half. I think we ended up spending 700 pesos there (550 + 150 tip). **, $80
• A-something, right next to Margaritaville (and next to some shrimp place), Mexican. OK, nothing too special, medium price. I think next time I’ll try the shrimp place. **, $40
• The Corner, just up the street from the Giggling Marlin (not on the main drag, but in towards town). A nice Internet cafe / coffee bar / real bar. Friendly staff, cheap beer. Can’t go wrong. Also, apparently you can get calls to the US for $0.35 a minute, probably a voice-over-IP thing. **, $? (we just had 2 beers for $4).
• The Shrimp Factory, Mexican (mostly shrimp-based, surprisingly enough). One of my favorite places to get into trouble. Coconut shrimp are always good. ***, $40
• Edith’s, east side of the bay, just up the street from the beach front restaurants (Billigan’s Island, The Office, and Mango Bar). A nicer restaurant, but you need a reservation, even on a Sunday. We didn’t know this. Oops. ???, $100
• The Office, east side of the bay. We didn’t actually go here — on Sundays and Thursdays they do Mexican Fiesta, which is a Mexican band that plays, and probably some other stuff. You’ll need reservations on these days. ???, $50
• Mango Bar, east side of the bay, far side (in the same line as Billigan’s Island and The Office). We ate here on our last night, and I suspect this is where I ate something that gave me a small case of Montezuma’s Revenge. Either that or Margaritaville, which is where we had lunch. A lot of fun if you want to eat on the beach, but you have lots of street vendors coming up to you — all beaches in Mexico are public, so there are lots of people right there to offer their trinkets. Prices are OK. **, $50
• Los Adobes, Todos Santos. Overpriced and average. We thought we’d get a fun, amazing meal in a small town, and, were, well, wrong. Pretty surroundings though. *, $50 (lunch)

Conclusion
This brings me to the end of our trip log for Cabo… I”ll see about not being lazy this time and putting some pictures up, but it’s me, so I’ll probably take some time in doing that. Hope you find this useful for your trip!
Continued from Part I, Getting There, and Part II, Things to Do

Well, once you get down to Cabo, you’ll probably want to do something besides just lounge by a pool and drink. Or not, but perhaps your husband will. Anyway, here’s a quick list of what we did:
Getting Money:
We withdrew money from the ATMs there. At the time, it was $286.xx for 3000 pesos. My bank doesn’t appear to charge me for using a foreign ATM, but the local bank there did — I want to say it was 7.50 + 10% + 3, or about 13 pesos for the transaction. Still, under $1.50, which is what most people pay for using ATMs that aren’t their bank. There is an ATM at the airport as well.

Note: I recommend coming to Cabo with a decent amount of US cash (say $1000, but at least $500) and getting some pesos there, and try to avoid using a credit card. Most credit cards will charge 3% on top of the transaction, so save yourself some money and use cash. Also, you can usually get a discount if you pay with cash!

Exchange Rate:
When we went, the exchange rate was about 10.50 pesos to the dollar. However, you need to be careful when buying something to see whether or not you should buy in pesos or dollars. Most people would have a 10:1 exchange rate… it’s easy for everyone, and tends to favor the vendor for the US customer paying in dollars. However, they are nicking you by about 5%. There are other times where you’ll see people offer an 11:1 or even 12:1 rate… but watch out! These guys will give you a price in US dollars, and THEN multiply by the conversion rate. For example, let’s say the bank will give you 10.50 pesos to the dollar. Here’s a quick chart to illustrate when you should pay pesos or dollars:

Price            10:1     10.5:1    Difference   You should...

1000 pesos       $100     $95.24    $4.76        Pay in pesos!

Price            11:1     10.5:1    Difference   You should...

$100 US          1100       1050    50 pesos     Pay in dollars!

In general, know the exchange rate. When someone offers a number below that rate, pay in pesos. When someone offers a number higher, pay in dollars. Now, the above illustrates that you’re basically losing $5 off a $100 transaction — which is 5%.

Activities:
Scuba Diving, with Amigos Del Mar (Friends of the Sea). It’s a dive shop pretty close to the Finisterra. The one we used last time, Neptune, appears to have gone away. It boasts the most comfortable dive boat in Cabo… and while this may be true (certainly it was the nicest I saw while out), it’s still pretty crappy. It’s just a trimaran with a covered bench seating area and a head for midgets. There is a decent amount on both sides to get geared up though, which is nice. The other boats are just covered dingies, so Amigos is a step up, but it certainly isn’t as nice as say any of the sport finishing boats or booze cruise boats. Seems that the dive shops in Cabo all operate on a shoe-string budget… the other ones I looked at were equally packed and muddy. At $75 for two local dives and $20 for rental, you figure they should be able to make some money, but I suspect it’s not nearly as popular in Cabo as say sport fishing — and divers aren’t chartering boats for $300 - $600 per day!

Todos Santos, with Rancho Tours. MK and I trucked out to Todos Santos, a little farming and art town about an hour north of Cabo San Lucas. It’s famous in theory for the Hotel California from the Eagles’ song, but I’m highly skeptical that it’s the actual one. Nonetheless, they do talk it up — with a huge gift shop to match! There’s also a bunch of art galleries, jewelry stores, and other souvenirs to be had. Worth the $45 a person excursion cost… we had thought about renting a car and going up for the day, but a shuttle with someone else driving and providing beer was a much better idea.

Shopping:
OK… Cabo San Lucas is rather expensive — meaning the prices are pretty similar to what you’d expect to pay in a US city, not what you’d expect to pay somewhere rural and in Mexico. This is because most of the places tourists go sell to only tourists, not the locals. You can buy the same souvenirs at multiple stores in the area, which includes Todos Santos at least, and probably San Jose del Cabo and La Paz. Mass-produced for-tourist stuff available everywhere includes little hand-made dolls, T-shirts, jewelry (silver and otherwise), blankets, Mexican-style clothing (such as panchos), and so on. It reminded me a lot of the vendors at the Great Wall in China — hundreds of vendors, all selling the exact same stuff, and clearly most of it was mass produced.

Bargaining:
Street vendors (both the hawks in the street as well as those that have small booths in public markets) will bargain fairly easily. Store clerks won’t as much — but they will typically give you a cash discount - about 5%. For street vendors, the easiest way to bargain is to ask the price… they usually don’t have it on the items. Then say that you saw it at the other store for less. Mexico isn’t China, they won’t go down to 20% of the actual price — it appears to be more like 2/3 to 3/4 of the price. There appears to be much less negotiation on the price of silver though. So start with half or 2/3, depending on how you feel, and come up. It’s OK to walk away… again, there are tons of folks selling the exact same thing. Oh, important note: never show that you really, really want something before you start bargaining. The vendor will know you want it and won’t move much. But they’ll move when they think you don’t care that much whether you buy it or don’t — they’d rather have the sale than nothing.

Continued from Part I, Getting There, and to be continued in Part III, Dining

So every time Mary Kaye and I come down to Cabo, we’ve hit a nearby restaurant, Romeo Y Julieta, which serves fine Italian food. Well, this time, we went on Saturday night, and service was slow (as it often is in Mexico), but while we were waiting for the check, a woman came to us to pitch us to come to a timeshare pitch. My wife and I said no a couple times, but the woman would just not go away — even after we told her that we were leaving on Monday and just had the following Sunday to do some final shopping.
Look… I know that Cabo is a huge tourist trap, and most of the money that flows around here is connected to only a couple of groups that own most of the resorts, local restaurants, and activities centers, and a large portion of the money comes from selling time shares. Apparently, 1 out of 3 people who go to a presentation buy, which seems surprisingly high to me, but the real number is still probably higher than I’d imagine. That’s why they’ll give about $200 worth of value (which is usually in the form of discounts to stuff they own, so it’s probably more like $50 worth of actual cost). And I do find it a bit fun to see how much crap I can get these folks to offer just to go to a presentation. Last time, we (arguably foolishly) got sucked into one on the shuttle bus over here, and then got the Finisteera to up the offer to visit the resort they were building next door, the Plaza Grande. For those interested, on the Los Cabos Express, which costs $13 per person to get you to any of the nearby hotels, they’ll pitch you to come see the Western Regina, which is a resort like all the others. What they’ll do is ask for $20, and in return when you go to the presentation they’ll give you the $20 back, they’ll pay for the bus to your hotel ($26), will provide free transportation in a van back to the airport when you leave (about $30), and will give you two tickets to the big boat for a booze cruise ($85 / person, so $170). So, you’ve just been offered about $226 worth of value to you (assuming you want the cruise) that you would have had to pay, just for a few hours of your life on vacation.
The Finisterra upped this with $100 off our room service bill. So hey, $326 worth of stuff… and for a resort right next door, vs trucking out 30 minutes to the Regina, so it did work out reasonably well. Again, this was back in 2001. The Finisterra is now being much more slick about their offer… they’ll just invite you for $100 off and activities discount, but we overheard some people trying to set them up, and they were a bit of a pain — only one discount for something, not per person, and you could only pick certain days. Lovely. However, while pestering people when they get off the plane, on the bus, or when you check-in is one thing. It’s annoying, but ignorable. However, pestering people while they’re waiting for the check at a restaurant is just offensive. I didn’t go to a restaurant to be pitched, I went there to eat.
So, Romeo Y Julieta - you are now dead to MK and I. No On Notice or anything — there are plenty of other places in Cabo, we’ll go there. Oh, in other news — I left my ATM card in the ATM yesterday right before we went. Spent most of the evening tracking down the 800 number to call; ended up calling a friend who looked it up for me. Housekeeping found it and has it, and called me this morning — so at least the staff is honest here. But then again, they work for a living.

We’re here in Los Cabos, and I spent the morning diving. Since I forgot my trusty log book, I figured I’d jot down the normals here:
Dive 1
Pelican Rock, Cabo San Lucas
Diveshop: Amigos Del Mar
Dive Master: Erik (perhaps Erique)
Gear:
5mm wetsuit, no booties / gloves / hood
27lb weight

Start: 2/9/06 8:58 AM (MST)
End: 2/9/06 9:23 PM

Max depth: 59 ft
Duration: 24:41
Ave depth: 32 ft
Water temp: 65 F
Vis: 20 ft
Dive 2
North Wall, Cabo San Lucas
Diveshop: Amigos Del Mar
Dive Master: Erik (perhaps Erique)
Gear:
5mm wetsuit, no booties / gloves / hood
30lb weight (+1 weight)
Start: 2/9/06 10:18 AM (MST)
End: 2/9/06 10:51 PM
Max depth: 53 ft
Duration: 32:41
Ave depth: 33 ft
Water temp: 66 F
Vis: 20 ft

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.

Mary Kaye and I headed out for our first adult vacation in 2 and a half years… yes, just the two of us in Cabo! MK’s mom & step-father flew out from PA to take care of Laura, so we’re alone for a week! These entries are going to be a bit time-shifted… no Internet down here! Well, there is, but it’s a pain to set up, so I’m just not going to.do it. A week without the Internet… yow!