Okay, so in the previous post, I was really positive about our trip to Cabo. And it got off to a pretty good start. Unfortunately, the second half of the trip was not quite as successful as the first party. (Or maybe I should say the middle part. The beginning was also unsuccessful since we were supposed to be going to Hawaii, not Mexico, but, you know, Covid.)
So, anyway, after an amazing few days at Hacienda Encantada just outside of Cabo San Lucas, we headed up the coast to finish out our vacation with a few days in San Jose del Cabo. Before going to Los Cabos, while I was frantically trying to plan a whole new trip while sitting in the airport—read the story here, I read that Cabo San Lucas is more the party scene, while San Jose del Cabo is more of the artsy, bohemian scene. This sounded much more my style, and I was firmly expecting for this to be my favorite part of the trip.
The best laid plans…
The drama started when we left our amazing, wonderful all-inclusive hotel in Cabo San Lucas, and checked into our sad, dingy, not so great hotel in San Jose del Cabo. I’m not going to give the name of the hotel because it’s hard to know how much of our bad experience was the hotel’s fault and how much was Covid’s fault. Things were different trying to travel in 2020, and this place had really great reviews online, which made our stay all the more disappointing.
First of all, the property just seemed dated. The rooms and the hallways all looked like they could use a makeover. Second, it was really dirty. Like, one morning there was puke all over the hallway, and when we went back to our room several hours later, it was still there! Gross! Third, the food and drinks were a major disappointment. When you stay at an all-inclusive resort, you kind of prepay for your meals when you pay for your room, and we didn’t want to waste that, but the food was generally not great, and the drinks were awful.
Honestly, I think if we had stayed at this property first, I wouldn’t have been such a brat about how much I didn’t like it. It wasn’t horrible. It just wasn’t great. But we were staying here after staying at a far superior property, and that made the contrast so much worse. One of my favorite things about travel is staying in cool and unique accommodations, so to waste three nights at a sub-par property was a major bummer.
Okay, all the negative stuff out of the way, the one redeeming quality of the hotel is that it was right on the beach, and it was an awesome beach. I live in the desert, so it is magical for me to be near the ocean. I could listen to the waves forever and never get tired of it. We spent our first afternoon in San Jose del Cabo reading and relaxing. Then we went for a long walk on the beach around sunset.
The next day, we walked to downtown San Jose to explore the town. It had a very cool vibe, with lots of quirky galleries and colorful buildings. We spent the whole morning walking around and did a little shopping. There were a lot of things about Los Cabos that reminded me of my home state of New Mexico, and San Jose felt kind of similar to Santa Fe.
In the afternoon, we made our way back to our disappointing hotel, where we hung out by the pool for a while, then did a pretty magical photo shoot on the beach. Because we weren’t thrilled with our hotel, we spent a lot of time at the beach, which was not a bad trade to make! Unfortunately, you can’t swim in the ocean here because the waves are really powerful, but I usually prefer just walking in the sand anyway.
We had one more day in San Jose del Cabo before heading back home. We learned after arriving that all the excursions in Los Cabos are crazy expensive, and we didn’t want to spend a lot of money just because we had nothing to do, so we didn’t book anything for our last day. I think this was probably a mistake. We had done a lot of relaxing so far on this trip, and I wish we had done something fun on our last day, even if it was expensive. Instead, we just hung out on the beach again, which was nice, but I can only take so much relaxing. I had also finished my book by that point, so I didn’t even know what else to do to relax. (Ben said I could download a book on my phone, but I wasn’t that desperate yet.)
We walked to the San Jose Estuary, which I’d read online was a cool, free thing to do. We saw a few birds, but it honestly wasn’t that exciting.
So, yeah, our trip to Los Cabos just kind of fizzled out towards the end. It wasn’t Los Cabos’ fault. I think we just didn’t have a good plan and got unlucky with our hotel choice. The moral of the story is stay at Hacienda Encantada because I don’t think we would have been sad to just chill out there for a whole week.
I hate being negative about my travel experiences because I know I am so fortunate to be able to travel as often as I do and to go to such a variety of places. I don’t ever want to take that for granted, and travel is one of my very favorite things. But sometimes, things just don’t work out as planned. And trying to make a trip happen in the middle of a global pandemic was obviously not going to be a normal trip. We still had a good vacation overall, and I don’t think I would ever have gone to Los Cabos if crazy pandemic-related travel issues hadn’t put it on my radar. And then we ended up really liking the area! I would definitely be willing to go back some day and let Los Cabos have a second chance to impress me.
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