January 29, 2008 7:37 PM
The Other Side Of Cabo
The thing to do for fun these days in Mexico is to call yourself a real-estate agent and sell timeshares to the flocks of well-off people who are coming to Cabo San Lucas for sun and fun. Last week, I camped out at a table on a nice patio overlooking the ocean at the Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach resort, and every six minutes or so a new salesperson would arrive, with two prospective buyers in tow, and deliver the same spiel. You can see the whales nearly all winter. There is a kids' club. A bunch of pools. And right over there are the homes owned by Madonna, Bruce Willis and Paul Allen. All this for a price that is less than coming to stay in the hotel, if you were to come here on vacation every year … until you're eighty or so.
Boy, this town has grown like crazy. On the way in from the airport now you pass the new Costco, the Wal-Mart and the Home Depot. The beach in Cabo is lined with hotels, to which have been added grand, Vegas-style shopping arcades. Restaurant/bars like Squid Roe and Cabo Wabo have been joined by dozens of competitors, all offering lobster, beer and tequila.
It was a little too much for me to bear, so I went for a walk through town, away from the tourist zone, just to remind myself that I was in Mexico, not San Diego. Men wore jeans and boots and buttoned shirts (never shorts and crocs and Tommy Bahama t-shirts), kids played, women shopped and talked, and there were amazing sightings, like the partial skeleton of a dinosaur assembled in a park, a fountain and bandstand with a hand-painted mural in another, and lots of little backyard eateries with a couple of white plastic tables (presumably from Wal-Mart) and a hand-lettered sign advertising birria and pozole stews. Several of the streets were still unpaved. At busy corners, guys held up bottles of orange juice for the cabdrivers to buy on the fly, perhaps the lowest rung on the service-industry ladder.
In short, the Cabo of simple living still exists, but you've got to work harder to find it. The other fun thing to do was compare the offers of free enticements that the timeshare sellers dole out: Gift certificates to restaurants and spas, free room nights, and in one case, $250 in cash. The newest sport in Cabo is going to pitches and bargaining like crazy. I bet it would make a good reality-TV show.
Boy, this town has grown like crazy. On the way in from the airport now you pass the new Costco, the Wal-Mart and the Home Depot. The beach in Cabo is lined with hotels, to which have been added grand, Vegas-style shopping arcades. Restaurant/bars like Squid Roe and Cabo Wabo have been joined by dozens of competitors, all offering lobster, beer and tequila.
It was a little too much for me to bear, so I went for a walk through town, away from the tourist zone, just to remind myself that I was in Mexico, not San Diego. Men wore jeans and boots and buttoned shirts (never shorts and crocs and Tommy Bahama t-shirts), kids played, women shopped and talked, and there were amazing sightings, like the partial skeleton of a dinosaur assembled in a park, a fountain and bandstand with a hand-painted mural in another, and lots of little backyard eateries with a couple of white plastic tables (presumably from Wal-Mart) and a hand-lettered sign advertising birria and pozole stews. Several of the streets were still unpaved. At busy corners, guys held up bottles of orange juice for the cabdrivers to buy on the fly, perhaps the lowest rung on the service-industry ladder.
In short, the Cabo of simple living still exists, but you've got to work harder to find it. The other fun thing to do was compare the offers of free enticements that the timeshare sellers dole out: Gift certificates to restaurants and spas, free room nights, and in one case, $250 in cash. The newest sport in Cabo is going to pitches and bargaining like crazy. I bet it would make a good reality-TV show.
