Switching to the Viceroy Hotel

Los Cabos Travelog #12
Viceroy San Jose del Cabo - Mon, 6 May 2024, 4pm

Today around lunchtime we headed back to San Jose... but not the one near our home. Now we're in San Jose del Cabo, Baja California Sur, MX instead of San Jose, California, US. This is officially the club part of our club trip. The next 3 nights at the Viceroy hotel in San Jose BCS are being paid for by my company.

In a previous blog I wrote about what I saw as the difference between 4.5 and 5 star hotels based on the distinctive service at the Waldorf Astoria. By that rubric the Viceroy is at hest a 4.5 star hotel. The rooms may be nice— though we wouldn't know, because we haven't been assigned a room yet— but other than that it's just a normal, large hotel. When we arrived the lobby was busy with people checking in, and we had to wait. At the Waldorf there was never a line, for anything. There were always enough staff on hand to greet us immediately.



Like I said, our room wasn't ready yet when we arrived, so we left our luggage with the bellmen and grabbed our beach bag to head down to the pools and the beach. The pools and beach are out across this... water court, I'll call it for lack of a better term... and then down a few levels. Descending those levels on ramps feels like leaving the Ziggurat.

We staked out a couple of beach chairs and put on suntan lotion. We headed first for the surf. That was mostly a no-go as the waves were pounding too hard to want to go in deeper than our knees. And Brr, the water was cold! Oh, and the sand was rough, too. It hurt my bare feet to walk across it. We retreated to our beach chairs and ordered lunch from the beach-side cafe.

Lunch was... edible. I.e;, it was bland Mexican food. And overpriced, though not $133-for-two-people bougie.

After eating we hung out at the pool for a while. Many of my colleagues were there. Some of them were already pretty well liquored up even at 2pm. Ah, day-drinking. It's a younger man's sport.

Watch on YouTube

Around 3 we headed back up to the lobby to see if our room was ready yet. It was. They just hadn't texted me like they said they would. We went to the room, started to unpack, then thought to make walk-through videos like the one above. 😅 And it's not just for showing off. Making and narrating a short video like this is a great way to remember things months or years later. I'm trying to remember to make short videos more often of cool places I go.

Club Reception, $800 Expense Account

Los Cabos Travelog #13
Viceroy San Jose del Cabo - Mon, 6 May 2024, 11pm

This evening our company held a welcome soirée for Club. It was in the "bird nest" just outside our room. (Though actually it looks more like a squirrel nest or maybe a beaver den.)

Yes, this was a welcome reception even though Hawk and I have already been in the area for two days. We pre-extended our trip, paying for the extra two nights on our own. Today's the official arrival day and is why we switched hotels and checked in to the Viceroy.

At the soirée we ate and drank until around 9. Hawk went back to our room after that while I went upstairs to the bar on the roof to drink some more with colleagues. There are some people in the group who drink like fish. I'm trying to respect my own limits and not get sick or get so sloshed I do something stupid. (One colleague already dived into a 4' deep pool and got a bloody forehead from hitting the bottom. 😨) Even so, I drank more than I really wanted to tonight. ...But not so much that I'll be sick. I think. 😰

Club gifts were slightly less generous this year than last. Recall last year in addition to a bag of towels and flip-flops and suntan lotion and crap like that we got a nice USB speaker and... oh, did I mention?... $800 cash. This year there's no valuable item like a USB speaker. I did consider bringing mine from last year to use in the room but decided not to as I imagined we might get another one this year. 😂 Alas, no. And instead of $800 cash we have an allowance to spend up to $800 on food and file an expense report for reimbursement.

An $800 expense limit is not the same as $800 cash. $800 cash is $800 in your pocket, literally. Last time we took the $800 cash meant for 3 days of food and drink and stretched it to cover not only all our meals for 5 days but also the costs of a rental car for two days to tour the island on our own and other incidentals.

An expense limit means up to $800. And we've got to eat $800 of food and drink— or at least order it and throw it away 🤣— to get the full amount. But we don't have expensive tastes. And we're allergic to paying ridiculous resort prices even for basic food. That bougie $133 lunch? We only did that because we knew we were eating on other people's money. And even with OPM we couldn't stand to do it more than once. It's just not our character to spend money wastefully even when it's not ours.