Day 5 - San Jose Del Cabo to Cabo Pulmo - Friday, January 24, 2014

Today, our last full day we decided to take the long drive (about 2 hours) to cheek out Cabo Pulmo, as we read it was fantastic.  Unfortunately, we got a late start and then had two mis-starts.  First we went North along the coast and out of nowhere there is a chain link across the road.  I stop just short of it impacting our rental car…..the road is closed as it looks like it was washed out.  So we decide to try the dirt road…in my tiny little chevy…..the road is just to difficult with sand, boulders, pot holes……this time we changed our minded and decide to take the highways….thus we arrived quite late for good snorkeling.   But it looks like this is THE PLACE to visit again on a dive vacation.

Day 4 - Puerto Los Cabos - Thursday, January 23rd

Today our goal was to find a location where we could rent kayak's.  Since I had visited Cabo San Lucas on a business trip recently I experienced the new resort community called Puerto Los Cabos.  It was only a few miles from our hotel.  As we drove around we came across a business called Dolphin Discovery.  We hope this type of tourist attraction helps to educated and thus help to be conscious of our impact on the ocean.  I (we) both felt so bad for the dolphins as their homes where just large holding areas in the Puerto Los Cabos Marina. All day long the dolphins, push, pull, pose and smile with the tourists…….in any case as we walked past the Dolphin Discovery we discovered, just by luck an isolated restaurant and small beach just to the south of the main exit / entrance to the ocean, in this marina.

We enjoyed the beach and ocean water as we waited for the guy "who has the key" to open the kayak's, paddle boards, etc. location.

So we started out and it we pretty easy going, the ocean was somewhat smooth.  There were no boats and anything near us and we paddled south towards Cabo San Lucas.  At the time we were considering turning around we realized our hotel was only a short distance away.  Since it was lunch time and out hotel was an all-inclusive we figured what the heck let's stop and have lunch and paddle the kayak's back after lunch.  Our concern were the waves getting into and then out of the shore again.  We went for it and caught one wave heading into shore it was great until we turned over.  All was OK as we were able to protect ourselves and get the kayak on shore.   After a nice Mexican lunch it was much easier to get the kayak's back out to sea vs. getting them into shore.  All and all it was a fantastic kayak trip and exactly what we had hoped for.  I didn't take pictures nor videos but here is one in which they caught some jumping rays.  We saw these along the shore in the breaking waves in the mornings.

Day 3 in San Jose Del Cabo - Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Another beautiful day on Cabo, again around 82 degrees with the water in the mid 70's.  Another day at leisure.  Only today after breakfast we are going over to Chileno Bay to spend the day snorkeling, swimming and getting some sun. While this is much more touristic then Santa Maria Bay it has it's own benefits, like bathrooms, showers, etc.

The snorkeling video below is exactly what we experienced during our day here!

We then went back to our hotel to relax, eat, drink and be merry!

Day 2 in San Jose Del Cabo - Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Today I took Beth on a drive south to the point of the Baja California Sur to the town known as Cabo San Lucas.  Our hotel is in the San Jose Del Cabo area and Cabo San Lucas is about a 20 minute drive south to the Peninsula.  We walked around Medano beach and the Puerto Paraiso Shopping Mall.  As I expected Beth did not like Cabo at all.  Cabo is the Party town.

From here as we drove back towards our hotel we stopped to do some sunning and snorkeling at the Santa Maria Beach and Bay.  We loved it for a number of reasons...#1 it's off the beaten path, so more local people vs. tourist.  #2 No facilities, like bathrooms, showers, etc, plus it's down a short dirt road.  #3 Very calm waters and pretty good visibility as it's tucked into this Bay.  However we did not like the idea that boat after boat would pull into the bay and let all their customers into the bay to snorkel.  We spent a few hours here before heading back to the hotel.

Check out this video:

1st day in San Jose Del Cabo - Monday, January 20, 2014

This morning, after our buffet breakfast we walked the beach in front of our hotel.  We saw a few manta rays swimming with the surf.  I'd never seen small ray's do something like that before, it was neat to watch.  Here are some photo's of our beach

Given that we arrived last night, we decided that today we would hang around the hotel/resort and take it easy

In the late afternoon, after a bite to eat we wanted to get in some more walking, Beth set a goal to walk 10,000 steps a day minimum....so we went down to the Esterio San Jose Del Cabo.  It's pretty amazing to see this huge fresh water estuary right at the ocean.

Great first day, the weather was 84 and the ocean temperature is 75 degrees

Cabo San Lucas - arrival Sunday, January 19, 2014

Beth is starting a short term (3 months) job working 75% time.  He start date is Monday, January 27th.  So at the very last minute we decided that we wanted to beach/ocean relaxing vacation prior to her start date.  We chose Cabo San Lucas because it is close (2 hour and 40 minute fight) and not too expensive!
I booked our flights, last minute on Virgin America (about $750 total for both of us round trip).  BTW the planes were only about 1/2 full on both of our flights.

We booked the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos, it's Hyatt's first ever ALL INCLUSIVE.

We arrived around 5:00 pm and I had arranged to have a rental car (Styx) for our entire stay.  However the 49ers were playing the Seattle Seahawks to see who would go to the Super Bowl.  In the Sports Bar at the Hyatt there were a lot of Seahawks fans and NO 49ers fans.  I rack this up to the fat that when we left SF is was about 75 degrees and no rain in sight....to beautiful weather.  Most is not all the people in Cabo San Lucas are from Canada, Montana, South or North Dakota and of course Seattle as the weather sucks.  In any case I had to root hard and loud, which Beth did not appreciate, in order to try and compensate for not having any other fans to cheer with me.  While I had never been to an All Inclusive, I do love that I could order 2, 3 shots of Tequila and keep em coming.....as it turns out we lost the game on almost the last play!

Las Vegas for the weekend Friday, January 3 to Sunday, January 5, 2014

Beth, Myra, Holly and a few other women held a"Goal's weekend workshop at out Kenwood home his weekend.  Rather then sit at home Richard enrolled me to spend the weekend in Vegas.  His cousin Roger lives there so he was going to semi-host us.

Roger picked us up at the airport.  We stopped by his house to pick up his targets, bullets, guns, etc as we are starting off our day with a little target practice with a hand gun!  Check it out I even got a Bullseye!!!!!!

After target practice Roger took us on a ride through the Red Rock Canyon National Park, it's pretty cool!

Friday night we ate dinner downtown and played Craps there as it's only $5 a bet.  When we got back to our hotel, "The Bellagio" the minimum bet amount on a Saturday night was $25......I didn't do to much gambling, as I don't like to lose the hard earned money I've made.  I did place some sports bets and it just showed how amazing Vegas is.  On 3 of the 4 NFL playoff games this weekend Vegas won BOTH sides of the bet.  No matter which team you took, either they won but did NOT beat the point spread, it was amazing.

Saturday we hung around the hotel and just took the day at leisure, we did check out the Bellagio fountains!