DAY 12: Look Kids...Big Ben...Parliament...Cabo San Lucas...
Mood:  silly
This ship still shudders whenever it pulls into port, even though we aren't docking at Cabo San Lucas, we're anchoring out in the harbor and tendering in to shore. We anchored at about 7 AM and who can sleep while the shippy shippy shake is going on? I got up even though my shore excursion wasn't meeting until 9:20.

Amy came back from breakfast about 7:30 and let me know that there was chocolate lava cake from last night's dinner that I didn't make due to migraine. I had the chocolate lava cake for breakfast. I think the lava congealed by that time, so we renamed it chocolate truffle cake. I had that with some diet Coke from Topsiders and read my book until time to go down for the shore excursion.

This excursion was the Los Arcos Sea Kayak Adventure. Jeff and Jen were again on the same excursion. The group met up in Diversions and got our Simba sticker that identified us as one group and went out to get into the tender boat. These are much smaller than the tender boats we were used to in Grand Cayman. We got on the boat and waited around while more tender boats lined up to pull up to the ship and load passengers. Still our boat waited. Then we loaded the dive group, which Lynn and Scott were part of, so we said that we'd been waiting all this time for Scott. The boat didn't move until we loaded some crew members and then we left for the pier.

Once on the pier we met our tour guide, Waldo (his real name is Ubaldo but he uses Waldo for tour guide purposes) who put us on another boat and took us to a beach where the sea kayaks were all lined up. Yikes, they're all two person kayaks and I am not a team player. So, I got distressed enough that the poor fellows leading the tour actually put me in a one person kayak. This is a good thing, they were going to match me up with some dude from the ship, and I don't want to be spending the entire ride with some strange guy sitting behind me telling me to row differently from the way I'm rowing. This is probably a metaphor for my life somehow.

So we got put in the kayak and rowed out to sea. It turns out to be easier to do than I thought it was. So Ubaldo rows us out into the middle of the ocean and has us gather around so he can talk to us about the area. In kayaks! And it works, although we can't always hear him. Not only that, but in Cabo there are always boats racing past - racing boats, sightseeing boats, party boats, whatever. He has us row into a cove to see an arch where the sea goes through, then over to a nearby rock that I can't figure out until this critter raises its head and looks at us - and I realize the rock is full of sea lions. They don't care about the kayaks, they just look at us.

Ubaldo tells us something very important - not to go into the ocean on the Pacific side when we get into the beach. If we want to swim we need to go in on the Cabo bay side.

We beach the kayaks. There goes my paddle - into the ocean...and off it goes, floating away. The tour guy who isn't Ubaldo has to go out and retrieve it.

The boat shows up with our stuff (it was all put onto a small boat which followed us) and we got our cameras and things and went down to the sea on the Pacific side, since the water is too cold to snorkel. This is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen, but no way we're going in the ocean, it's busy punishing the rocks and you never saw so much foam and swirling water. Jen and I stood near the edge so it would wash over our feet, and the water was damn cold. I had my camera with me, which Jen warned me about, but I was sure I could hold it over my head when the wave came in. One wave eventually came in OVER my head, so my digital camera is now apparently a sacrifice to the Pacific, which is mocking me.

Eventually we got back in the kayaks to return to the original beach. While the tour guy who was not Ubaldo was dragging me into the water, a wave hit my kayak and flipped it right over. I got up within a couple of seconds to the tour guides' obvious relief, but I now had sand in places where sand was not meant to be (such as in my hair).

We paddled back to shore, turned in our stuff, got back in the boat and headed to the pier. Jeff managed to get directions to Cabo Wabo (Sammy Hagar's cantina in Cabo) so after a stop in the malodorous public restroom, we walked over there.

Jen and I discovered the Cabo Wabojito. This is like a mojito made with tequila. We had four of them apiece. Jeff just laughed at us. we also ordered a pizza called the Cheezy Greezy. It had five or six kinds of cheese on it and enough oil to fix the shortage (are you listening, President Bush)? It was the best food we'd had in ages. We ate it and ordered another one. Jen and I bought shirts in the gift shop and a bottle of tequila each.

The second pizza took a while so we got it to go. Jeff carried it and Jen and I just staggered. While Jen went into a store to buy postcards, Jeff opened the pizza and we ate it while sitting on the curb in front of the store. All three of us ate a couple of pieces of pizza. We got back to the ship in enough time for departure, which was supposed to be 4 PM.

4 PM came and the ship started shuddering, and the view of Cabo San Lucas out our porthole changed. Amy had come to the room by then, so we kept looking to see where we were going. The ship went around in a big circle and showed us the other end of Cabo San Lucas. It still shuddered but it wasn't going anywhere. We started getting ready for the show and dinner (it's formal night again) before we got an announcement that they were having difficulties pulling the anchor up and we'd be delayed in departing until 6. The ship kept turning around and showing us more of Cabo San Lucas. By the time we got ready to go to the show, we'd finally gotten under way. I don't know what the story is with the anchor yet.

The show is "Twice Charmed" which is a musical that tries for Broadway and doesn't quite make it, which makes it perfect for a cruise ship. It's about Cinderella's evil stepmother hiring a fairy godfather to turn back time so that she and the stepsisters can destroy Cinderella's other glass slipper before the Grand Duke shows up at their house, forcing the Prince to marry an ugly stepsister. It sort of works, for awhile. There were a few technical difficulties and a scene that seemed like the Prince was getting ready to give up on finding Cinderella and run off with the Grand Duke, but other than that it went off fine.

Jen came over to our cabin before dinner looking for some ibuprofen. She has the migraine now. We talked about the show. Jeff was on the internet, working. We went down for dinner and he joined us later. We ate and told anchor jokes. The turkey dinner wasn't as good as the Cheezy Greezy, but I had a mojito and that was good. We managed to get some contraband - an old menu with the "essence of leeches" typo in it.

After dinner Amy and I went to the second Adult Night in the Oceaneer Club, which describes rather well what happened when an experiment involving two men, three women, some balloons, baking soda and vinegar went totally awry. I remember the last time I laughed that hard...it was at the Adventurers Club and something had gone particularly awry there (but that didn't involve baking soda and vinegar).

Tonight is also the dessert buffet. I dropped in on it while waiting in line for the internet. There must have been 50 decorated cakes in there. The one I tried was coconut and almond with a chocolate straw on top. Best thing I've had all day other than a Cheezy Greezy.