May. 9th, 2024

canyonwalker: A toast with 2 glasses of beer. Cheers! (beer tasting)
Los Cabos Travelog #9
Downtown Los Cabos - Sun, 5 May 2024, 7pm

This evening we've enjoyed dinner at Tres Gallos, a Mexican style restaurant in Cabo San Lucas. It was recommended by our hotel concierge. Yes, we sought recommendations for a Mexican restaurant here in Mexico. This town is full of tourist traps designed to lure white-bread American tourists. Places like Señor Frog's are packed with tourists wearing Harley Davidson t-shirts, listening to Kid Rock, and pounding shots of cheap tequila, thinking it's all an authentic "South of the border" experience.

So here we are instead at a local restaurant that's less than half full, where the menu contains some Mexican cuisine staples like tlacoyitos you don't regularly see in the US, and the music comes from a mariachi group.

Dinner and mariachi music at Tres Gallos in Cabo San Lucas (May 2024)

Still, the clientele are mostly tourists. That's kind of unavoidable in a town like this. At least there isn't a cruise ship in port today; otherwise this place might be packed.

We enjoyed the mariachi music with dinner. The group played a wide repertoire of US and UK classic rock tunes. They covered CCR, Van Morrison, Clapton, Santana, etc. "They know their target demographic," Hawk quipped.

By the time the mariachis came to our table we'd already discussed what our request would be. "La Bamba!" we asked.

I felt a little self-conscious about that; isn't that just another tourist favorite? I wondered. A foreigner's notion of the local culture, like thinking that Outback steakhouse is at all Australian? But then the band jumped into it with great gusto as the server staff all briefly stopped what they were doing and clapped and sang along with it. I remembered, oh yeah, even though the modern version of La Bamba was recorded and published in the US, and made the US charts, it's actually a traditional Mexican tune, specifically a traditional mariachi tune, and it was adapted to the style of early rock and roll by a talented young Mexican-American singer.

canyonwalker: Hangin' in a hammock (life's a beach)
Los Cabos Travelog #10
Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos - Mon, 6 May 2024, 7am

Yesterday was our last evening and now it's our last morning at the lovely Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos. Once again I'm spending the morning lounging on our terraza with a private pool, finding little reason to leave our amazing hotel room.

The Waldorf continues to impress us with its service. I've stayed at 4.5-star rated hotels before. Many of them have been nice, but they were basically just huge hotels with nice rooms. I'm not sure if this hotel is rated 5 stars but if it is, the thing that separates 5 star hotels from those with merely 4.5 stars is the service. Everything here has felt so personalized. When we arrived, we felt like we were the only people arriving. There was no line at check-in in the lobby. There wasn't even a lobby. There was an outdoors lounge, where we were escorted with our drinks in hand, where a registration agent sat down with us at a private table to explain the paperwork.

Then there's this....

The Waldorf Astoria left a card for Hawk... on our toy stuffed hawk! (May 2024)

When we returned from dinner out last night, the hotel had left a card for Hawk in our room. No, they didn't give us the stuffed hawk; that's a toy we brought because it amuses us to travel with it. But the hotel did put the note— addressed to "Ms. Hawk"— on the hawk. 🤣

The staff's continued use of her preferred name is just one example of the hotel's distinctive customer service.

Edit: "Hawk is retiring" is the answer I gave to the concierge after he asked me several times ahead of our visit if we were celebrating anything special this trip. "We're celebrating coming to this hotel" seemed to be a silly answer even if it was the most accurate, so I went with Hawk's suggestion on this. It's a bit of a lie because while she is enjoying a few weeks or months of time off between jobs, she is actively seeking another job. I've called this "practice retirement" in the past but didn't want to try translating into a foreign language.

canyonwalker: Cheers! (wine tasting)
Los Cabos Travelog #11
Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos - Mon, 6 May 2024, 10am

Yesterday I lost one of my credit cards. I discovered its when I paid for last night's delicious dinner. Fortunately I had another card in my wallet to pay for dinner. Once back at the room I searched my other pockets and my shopping tote bag. It was nowhere to be found.

I'm pretty sure I left it behind at the tequila shop where I enjoyed an awesome free tequila tasting. I went to pay with one card for the bottle of tequila I bought, realized it wasn't the one I wanted to put the charge on, gave the shopkeeper another, and must've forgotten to tuck the first one back in my wallet.

Once I determined the card wasn't among my things I visited the issuer's website to lock it against further charges. There was no fraud on there yet. Possibly the shopkeeper found it and tucked it in the till for safe keeper, or I dropped it on the ground and nobody saw it.

This morning I tried calling the tequila shop to see if they had the card. Nobody answered, and the call went to a voicemail with a Spanish recording so rapid I couldn't be sure whom I called. Plus, there really isn't time today to go get it. I'll leave the card locked and wait another day or two to see if it pops up somewhere in my things.

Losing track of this card does piss me off even though the consequences will be minimal. It pisses me off partly because it's the second thing I've lost this trip. On Saturday morning on the way out here, I lost my sunglasses in the Uber ride to SFO airport. Hawk has thankfully lent me hers the past few days so I don't have to pay inflated prices for sunglasses at the tourist-trap shops around here— or walk around unable to see in the bright sun.

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