Day 9 - Mayan Monkey, Cabo San Lucas

It was glorious to wake up and know that we had the day off from riding. Not that I mind the riding, but at our age, the full days that we have been putting in is definitely starting to take its toll on us. At a sensible hour of around 9am, we dragged ourselves out of bed and along to the free breakfast at the Mayan Monkey, which was pretty damn good, for a free breakfast. The day was ours and we planned to go down to the beach for a bit of a wander, maybe check out a few bars, and then get into a spot of trouble later in the evening. Walking along the marina, I couldn’t get my head around the number of huge fishing boats and yachts that are located in Cabo San Lucas. Assuming that some of these cost in excess of a million US dollars, and that might be cheap, there were simply shit loads of them, hundreds if not even a thousand, the amount of money in the marina alone must exceed the GDP of Baja. It is weird to see such opulence amongst a backdrop of the poverty that we have seen in other places in Baja, but I don’t suppose that it is only Baja that experiences this kind of shocking disparity.

Having picked my jaw up from looking at the awesome fishing boats, we went down to the nearby beach, about 10 minutes’ walk from the hotel. We had a swim and took in the beautiful surroundings. The water was glorious, and we chilled out for about an hour just taking it all in.

Following the swim, we headed back to the hotel to clean up and head into town for some lunch. On our way past the waterfront, we found a little shop offering free tequila tasting. Say no more, we popped in to get a lesson in the tequila making process. Tequila silver is not aged at all, tequila blanco is aged for up to 6 months, tequila repasodo is aged for around 3 years in oak barrels that have had Kentucky bourbon in them, which gives it a slight colouring, tequila anjeno has been aged for over 3 years in wine barrels, which is even darker and smoother, and extra anjeno has been aged for even longer, sometimes in barrels containing cherries, which is the darkest, most expensive and tastiest tequila out there. I thought I knew much of what there is to know when it comes to tequila, but it was good to get the lesson, and the free tequila tasting. We tipped the young lady that was serving us about $2 and decided to head down the waterfront to find a restaurant for lunch. We stopped at a placed called WTF, right on the water, which was great to not only look at the boats, but people watch. Plenty of tourists hang about in Cabo so there was loads to see. We met an interesting fisherman, come hustler, who was very interested to hear that we are South Africans. He mentioned that they don’t really get many South Africans in Cabo, mostly Americans and Europeans, but not many saffas. I suppose this is a bit of a far-flung place for us japies to make it to.

Following lunch, we headed on to the main beach, where a lot of resorts and bars are set up with great views of the ocean and the golden sands. We had a few more dips in the sea and walked past some pretty wild bars that were hosting drinking games for young Americans, spring break style. Not really our vibe, but we certainly have been there before, so it was fun to watch, for a bit. After an hour or 2, we started the walk back to the hotel to get cleaned up for the evening and to head into town. We stopped at another free tequila tasting bar, where Paublo took us through the tequila making process, again. We let him talk us through it in order to get a taste of each of the tequila types again, but when we asked how much a bottle would be, he suggested a repasado tequila that cost $110 (American, not pesos). There was no way we were going to pay that, so we purchased a couple of beers from him and then tipped him like $5 and pressed on to the hotel, buoyed by the extra tequila and a few more beers. The little mini market below the hotel closed at 6pm and we arrived back at around 6:15. Luckily, they were still open so we managed to pick up a bottle of tequila for about 900 pesos, much cheaper than at Paublo’s tequila shop, and some water and then went up to the Mayan Monkey bar for a couple more beers and to get changed before heading out for the evening. Jorik did a ceviche cooking class, which the hotel put on for free, and I chilled out by the pool for a bit as fish is not my thing, being allergic to shellfish, I avoid all fish at all costs. I suppose that is my loss, but then if you don’t eat any fish, you don’t really know what you are missing.

Back in town, we bumped into a group of young kids, around 16/17 years old who were hanging out in the free tequila tasting bar that we had been in earlier in the day. I have no idea why, but we be got talking to them and have enlisted them into the Enfields Overland fold by asking them to promote the trip on social media, something I am sure they understand much better than us old geezers. We even managed to get some footage of the experience, although I do come across as being a little pissed. Having had a big (and expensive lunch), and Jorik had managed to have some ceviche, we didn’t feel the need to spend more money on an expensive dinner, so we had a few more beers, met a few more people and dished out our Enfields Overland business cards to just about anyone that would listen to us and take a card. As I am quite the stickler for details, I have been keeping a pretty accurate record of our expenses to date, but after the antics from the previous night, I found that it is difficult to keep up with our casual expenses. Jorik suggested that we take a limited amount of money out with us and then just see how much is left the next morning to account for our expenditure. As such, we only had mxn1,000 on us and in the last bar we went to, where we chatting with 2 American couples, we ordered our last beers of the evening and realised that we didn’t have enough money to pay for the beers. Thankfully, the Americans picked up the beers for us, which actually left us with mxn50 at the end of the night. We then stumbled back to the hotel and with the best intentions of having a few more beers in the hotel bar, ended up crashing and hitting the sack at about 11pm.