After Heather and I finally got to our hotel in San Diego we decided to walk to the Padres game which ended up being about 5 or 6 blocks away. I am sure if I had wanted to haggle or hustle for a for a better deal I could have gotten one, but I bought some decent seats from the first scalper we saw and just paid what he was asking. I got two tickets about 20 rows right behind home plate for $100 total (face value of $130). The seats turned out to be great, but the weather was pretty chilly. Since I decided I wasn't going to be making any effort whatsoever to stick to my diet on my trip I started off with a bang during the game. I got an order of garlic fries, a cheeseburger, a diet coke, a vanilla milkshake, and finished with a hot chocolate.....yum! We eventually moved down about 10 rows into some slightly better seats. The game ended up with the Padres winning 2-1 and we got to see the all-time saves leader, Trevor Hoffman, get another save. It was quite a show seeing him come in from the bullpen.
*Heather and I at the Padres game.
We then met an older couple (Corky and Barbara) that were San Diego locals and Padres season ticket holders. We asked them for some more advice about getting to Ensenada and they were not optimistic about our safety to say the least. She was a lawyer, he owned a rather large pest control company, and they had a couple of luxury boxes and 4 other sets of season tickets throughout Petco. Park so they obviously had plenty of money and had done plenty of traveling to say the least. They called a travel agent friend of theirs, asked some others around the park, and tried to think of everything they could to help us get to Ensenada safely. Everyone they talked to couldn’t come up with any solutions that they felt were safe alternatives for what we already had told them we planned on doing. Basically, even though they tried very hard to help us, all that really happened was that we became pretty scared for our safety and started to second guess our original plan of travel. They next morning we talked to some people at the front desk of our hotel and they seemed to be just as apprehensive about our plan as Corky and Barbara did. They got one of the Mexican housekeepers to give us a hand written note (in Spanish). Together Heather and I used our minimal Spanish skills to determine that the note basically said that we were two gringos that had no idea what we were doing and were ripe to be scammed. Actually, it said that wanted a taxi ride to Ensednada and to get on a cruise ship for less than $100. This wasn’t exactly want we needed our note so say as it wasn’t our original plan, but it might help us eventually get to where we needed to go so we kept it. After everyone we had talked to we just decided to go with our original plan. We walked about 5 blocks to the trolley station with our luggage in tow and I asked someone that seemed to know what they were doing to help me buy a trolley ticket. I bought two tickets to San Ysidro/Tijuana (the Mexican boarder) for $5 total. About 5 minutes later our trolley showed up and it the people on it were similar to what you would find on a New York Subway or probably any public transportation in any major city. If you don’t know what this crowd is like there is everything from homeless to middle class, people of normal body odor to incredibly smelly, very non-threatening people to crazy looking I’ll knock you out and rob you blind if you don’t watch your back type of people….except probably over half of the people spoke nothing but Spanish. I was a little uneasy with the trolley ride and Heather was pretty much a nervous wreck the whole time. We sat across from a nice looking lady that we decided to ask about what she thought the nest way to get from the border to Ensenada. Her reply: “Ah…No aspeaka Enlish.” Hmmm, well we decided we should show her our note and see if we could possibly use our Spanish skills to decipher her reaction to it. She read it, smiled, shrugged, and handed it back. Sweet! Thanks for the help. Well, we got off of the trolley and surprisingly she motioned for us to follow her. She walked us over the border and directly to the bus station (which we maybe never would have found on our own) and told the person working the ticket counter exactly what we needed, found out how much it would cost us and when it would be leaving.
*Me walking across the border
The tickets were $21 total and the bus was going to be leaving in about thirty minutes. That lady was a lifesaver (possibly literally, haha) and we were very thankful for her help. I was going to offer to buy her bus ticket to wherever she was going, but she wasn’t even going to the bus station she just went out of her way to make sure we got where we needed to go. The bus ride took about an hour and a half and they even had a movie playing for us to watch....in Spanish. Once we got dropped of in Ensenada we still didn't really know where to go. Using my great directional skills (I might have the worst sense of direction of anyone I know) I decided that we should walk away from the mountains we could see and hopefully towards where the water might be. We eventually were able to see our ship and found a group of really drunk Caucasians that looked like they could possibly be on our cruise as well. They told us to take the shuttle that was just up ahead. We got on the shuttle for $1 each and were getting really close now. At the end of the shuttle ride some security looking guy climbed aboard and asked to see everyone's Carnival Cruise card. We obviously didn't have one since we hadn't been on the boat yet, but for some reason he just passed over us and went to the back where he was being really strict with the people who hadn't gotten their cards out fast enough and stuff....shew! To get back on the boat you had to once again show your Carnival card along with a passport. After a small delay and some Spanish walkie talkie talk they let us board the boat. We had made it!
*Me collapsed on the bed when we finally had made it.
The weather was cold at first until we got closer to Cabo. Early on there wasn't much laying by the pool to be done and when we did our beach towels were used more as blankets than anything else. Instead we played putt-putt, did our fair share of eating, and just relaxed from our hectic day of travel.
The people that we randomly got seated with at dinner (same seating every night on a cruise) happened to be some really fun people and we did most of our hanging out with them.*From left to right: Me, Heather, Jenn, Matt, Michael, Alexa...(I just noticed that I somehow got stuck posing for this picture holding Heather's purse...I swear it was because I had just got done handing the the photographer Heather's camera from it and I wasn't really just carrying it around all the time). This was all of us after dinner smoking some cigars and having some drinks before we went into the karaoke bar (three of my favorite things, haha). We had already told the waitress we didn't need anything else, but when she propositioned the women to have a "Juicy Pussy" I couldn't help myself from buying a round for the ladies and that is what they are toasting in this picture.
Since we missed out on all of the off shore excursions in Ensenada we wanted to make sure we did something fun in Cabo. We tried to book a trip through the cruise ship, but they were already all full by the time we got around to it. We decided that we would be able to find something on our own and it would probably be cheaper that way anyway. We walked around for a while once we got to Cabo, but it was so early that most of the shops were still closed. Some guy that had a stand set up to promote tours and trips you could take in Cabo stopped us to ask if he could help us out with an activity for the day. We told him that we wanted to kayak somewhere and he gave us a map and showed us where we were and where we wanted to go to find the kayaking. We took about a 20 minute cab ride to the beach that he suggested and he dropped us off in an empty parking lot out front of the beach. We walked along a dirt path to get to the beach and when we got to the beach we were the only two people on the whole beach and there wasn't a kayak in sight!*Heather's actions shot.
*My action shot
*Heather and I under one of the shade huts....other people had finally started showing up to "our beach" by this time.....jerks!
Now that we had gotten here and realized that we weren't going to be doing any kayaking we started to wonder how we were going to get back to the ship. I don't think this was a typical tourist spot; there weren't any cabs waiting for us in the parking lot and its not like we could just call up a cab with our cell phones. We made some small talk with a nice couple from Seattle that had a a house in Cabo that ended up offering to give us a ride back with them and their two children....in a Volkswagen Jetta! It was a tight fit, but we were very grateful and gladly accepted. They gave us their card and told us to give them a call if we were ever interested in renting out their house for a week.We got back just in time for our 11:00am rendezvous at "The Office" with our new friends from dinner. "The Office" is a really fun bar right on the beach. Everyone had a great time and there was plenty of eating and drinking that took place.
*Our crew at "The Office".
*Here is a picture of some typical drunken shenanigans that takes place in Cabo. A race to see which couple could run to the water and switch bottoms first (please don't overlook the guy with HER bottoms on).
I am really getting sick of writing this blog so I am going to wrap it up quickly. There aren't too many other fun stories worth sharing and this thing is already WAY too long (I am sure no one outside of Heather and I care about these stories or pictures to begin with anyway). All in all, this was maybe the most fun I have ever had on a vacation and Heather makes for a fine cruise partner. Anytime you can spend five days straight with someone and not get sick of them at all you know you are pretty good friends....its weird how little it seems that either one of us has changed since high school.There will be another blog for me to post soon with some new goals and hopefully some ideas for my next planned vacation break!
There is no way I am proofreading this whole thing so deal with it and enjoy.
2 comments:
sweet blog and even sweeter yellow sweatshirt..
You know there are others that are interested in your blog whether it is about poker or your cruise. glad to see you made it and it looks like you had fun.
Dad and Trudy
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