beach

Los Cabos 2013 – Part IV

/ jasonhoang / 1 Comment

Final part! Funny… as I post these, the picture quality gets worse and worse hahaha oh well… Like I said – it’s the content that counts! Quality is a bonus!

These last few pics are of things we just didn’t really want to pull out even the point and shoot so I snapped some quick pics on my phone. I want to get these posted and done with so I don’t have to keep looking back at them and missing it while I’m sitting here at work.

Our plan for next year is to try either Mazatlan or the Mayan Riviera. I *finally* get three weeks vacation, so hopefully we can stagger it so that we can do one in the summer and one near the end of the year so that there is less withdrawal time. Hope everyone enjoyed looking at the pictures at least! I’ll be scrounging around for some more related content either tonight or tomorrow… I’m sure I have something laying around that I have yet to post…

This was a rib steak dinner that I had on the first or second night there. Can’t remember exactly…

Diana’s chicken Caesar lol – it’s so expensive, you have to cut your own lettuce!!

The reason I say that is because at our resort this time, people had the choice of doing a full all-inclusive or just treat the resort as a hotel. So many of the couples/families staying at the resort (for some reason) chose not to do all-inclusive, which means they would have to pay for all their meals and drinks. At first we were confused as to why the menus had prices on them, but after a few meals we saw families paying at the end.

The thing that sucks the most is that the food is not cheap and you’d be crazy to pay for any of the meals there. Our dinners were consistently over $100 easily – and that was one meal. Rib eye steak – $40, chicken Caesar – $25, 1L bottled water – $10, alcoholic drinks – $12, appetizers – $20. It adds up quick and the portion size is not exactly generous… albeit, if I wanted to order more I could have and wouldn’t be charged… Even if we just got a bottle of water and no appetizer, it’s still as expensive as a full meal that you would pay at a local restaurant like Cactus Club Cafe or Earl’s with drinks included.

Lesson of the day: Always get all-inclusive.

Can’t remember what drink this was. But when you stay at an all-inclusive, now is the time to try all the girly, fruity drinks you want, men. And nobody judges you because they’re doing it too.

Breakfast at Siempre. This was really the only place for breakfast and we had buffet everyday. This started my addiction for Jalapenos… Jalapeno, sausage, bacon, ham, and cheese omelet every day. Delish.

Also – fresh squeezed orange juice every day.

More drinks. Diana’s staple drink – the Pina Colada and a Corona for the second day. I didn’t get a beer after that because it was very skunky-tasting every time I got it. I hate it when they leave beer out to do that.

Yet another reason for girly drinks…

This was when we walked the long beach!

Obligatory writing in the sand. Making our mark.

As we walked the beach, we got to see tons of interesting things get washed up onto the sand. There was this one fish – no idea what it was. I’ll call it long-nose fishy – looked like it either got bit by something and spit out cause it tasted bad or it something else got to it…

Close up of it’s face and beak/nose. It was hard as f. Yes, I poked it.

More writing in the sand.

Further down the beach, I spotted a huge puffer fish! It was cool to see cause I used to own two puffer fish but they didn’t last long with my Piranha. This was pretty big for it’s size and it looked like it had just died.

Interesting fact: Puffer fish die (unfortunately) after inflating when they’ve been startled or are defending themselves. That looked to be the cause of this guys’ death…

Diana throwing up fob signs near the dead puffer… RANDOM. LOL kind of cruel.

Speaking of cruel, I did try and poke a hole in it with my walking stick but to no avail. That things’ skin was tough as steel. I ended up just slap-shotting it back into the ocean.

Again with the fob signs…

Diana displaying a bit of Captain Morgan paired with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dem guns.

This was finally at the end of the beach where the rocks were and a bunch of algae all over the place. Cool place but not worth that long ass walk.

Dinner at the Sunset resort. The sunset resort is about a 5 minute shuttle drive up the hill from the Pacifica (our resort). This place had pretty good dinners but it was such a busy atmosphere. The Sunset resort was open to families – which also means kids running around and being little shits. Diana and her pizza… It was Italian themed that night.

Next day we decided to try the sushi place for the first time. Not bad… I got my fix.

A cool thing was that they made their soy sauce with 50% orange juice as well. Thought it would taste weird but it ended up being pretty good – not as salty as soy sauce on its own.

Getting ready to go back to the beach. As the pics go on, you can see Diana getting darker and darker LOL. As for myself – I am one dark mother effer. At the beginning of our trip, people would ask me if I was filipino. By the end of the trip, people were talking to me in Spanish cause I was as dark as them. BRUTAL.

The koi pond outside the Sunset restaurant. Nice view.

More drinks. These ones were called Miami Vice – half strawberry daiquiri, half pina colada. The only reason we knew about these drinks was because I overheard one lady order it and when the waitress brought it out, it looked delicious so we ordered some too. Within a few hours, everybody around the pool had one in hand. Hypebeasts…

hahaha JK

Another dinner. This one in particular was $44 or something. A little tiny steak with three roasted baby potatoes and a small serving of Mexican rice. Needless to say, we went to eat sushi after this.

Another shot of my breakfast of champions. PEEP THAT JALAPENO. Delicious. This was also the last breakfast of champions I had on the trip… T_T

Random shot but this was taken outside of the Duty Free shop at the airport on our way back. After about an hour in there trying to figure out what we wanted, I was outside waiting for Diana while she went to the bathroom. Some lady – you can see her walking away in that white/blue dress – dropped three bottles of vanilla concentrate on the ground, panicked for a bit, looked at her stoned husband who didn’t want anything to do with her, then walked away. FOOL.

And the final pic from our trip. The saddest one – the trip back home… Until next year!

Thanks for looking guys!

Los Cabos 2013 – Part I

/ jasonhoang / Leave a comment

Well unfortunately (and I guess kind of fortunately), our vacation is over and we’re back home from Mexico. Unfortunately – because like last year, we never want to leave. Fortunately – because even though it sucks to leave such an amazing place, it’s good to be back home, even though home is not as beautiful LOL. It’s the daily grind that sucks more than anything since it’s back to work tomorrow.

Anyways, I took a bunch of pics from my SLR and Diana has some on her point and shoot and I also got some on my phone. I’ll split the posts up into four parts for those of you that are interested in looking. It won’t necessarily be in any order, just some cool pics to enjoy. Sorry to those that want to see more car pictures – I’ll most likely have some coming within the next week or so. Until then, you can look at these and then start planning your trip too 🙂

The first set is the first few days that we were at the resort – unpacking, walking around, checking out the scenery and such. We stayed at the Pueblo Bonito Pacifica Resort & Spa in Cabo San Lucas… Here we go!

Literally seconds after walking into the room and getting ready to unpack.

A view from our balcony of the resort. The center area is the Siempre where breakfast, lunch, and dinner is held. Below the balcony where you see the tables and chairs is the Sushi restaurant. To the right is the beach and the pools.

This was the next morning at about 9 AM. Sun was just coming up and it was already approximately +26C degrees.

Diana taking forever to get ready like always.

Night time shot.

Selfies. You’ll see a bunch of them lol

This was on Monday – unfortunately it rained the whole day and we didn’t really get to do much. We were stuck in the room for a big part of the day watching movies. Luckily for us, there were several channels with movies playing all day and night, so there was always something to watch. We hit up the gym and had our usual meals. It wasn’t until about 7PM that the rain started letting up and we hit the hot tub outside by the beach for a little bit. We regretted not going into town that day to shop to make use of our time, but it was still a fairly good day.

The rain isn’t cold, it’s actually super nice and warm. Humid – but nothing that bothered us. Too bad it lasted all day though and we didn’t see any sun that day.

It was mostly drizzling in our area as well. We heard that outside near the town a bit more it was pouring really hard.

That night we fat-status’d it up. Took advantage of the room service at midnight and got a Hawaiian pizza. We said that we would utilize the room service more often this time, but we only ended up using it once. We kind of feel bad – even though it’s a 24 hour service.

The rock courtyard outside our room. Nice place to walk if you’re bored.

We took a stroll out onto the beach a bit during sunset and I was able to capture some nice shots. You’ll see a bunch of shots of this mountain later since this was the best place to take pics of the sunset.

Sorry for the noisy picture. Was getting pretty dark and had to shoot at ISO 2500 – I think.

Jumping shots with drinks in hand. Gangster.

Diana got a mad burn from the day before on her legs while I got an even worse burn on my back that hurt so bad for about three days.

We learned our lesson last year when we got burned and didn’t have much to help us out. This time we bought Aloe lotion and aloe gel AND and aloe lotion+gel combo. By the second day we were going through it like crazy. Diana was addicted to it and applying it on herself every 5 minutes.

Here you can see her doing just that.

Here were our best friends for the whole week.

We also ended up booking two excursions. One was a town tour and a glass bottom boat tour around the Pacifica Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. The other was a Sunset ATV adventure which was super awesome – pics of that later…

A cool option we didn’t have at our last resort in Puerto Vallarta – change pillows to a bunch of different ones. The pillows we had when we got there were hard and super high so we ended up getting super stiff necks haha.

The next day there was a mexican festival out by the pool in the evening. We didn’t really know what was going on – our plan was just to go to the beach and take some pics. We ended up having to walk through this while they were dancing, singing and performing. Stands are set up selling cool souvenirs and it’s a little different than some of the other beaches. The reason is because the whole beach is privately owned and so there is no access to outsiders (beach vendors) to sell their own items. Instead, the resort sets these up instead and the one downside to it is that there is no haggling for prices with these guys.

People eating dinner and having a Mexican buffet.

The beach beds outside on the beach. These required reservation and $30 for the whole day. We didn’t end up doing it because we didn’t really see the need to use it when the pool was literally a few steps away. The only good thing about the beach beds was that you had a flag you could put up if you wanted some food or drinks and the guys would come running.

Another shot of the full beach with an earlier sunset.

Diana taking shots of the ocean. It looks like there’s nothing on her screen but there is… LOL it’s only like that cause I had my polarizer on.

The waves.

The other side of the beach. Visitors were not able to walk this side of the beach since it is a private beach area. Meaning, the owner of the resort didn’t want people on his private beach area. You can see his house on the right. Long story short – he went from poverty to billionaire in a little over 25 years and owns this huge area, which is made up of three other resorts. The Pacifica – the resort down at the beach for adults only, the Sunset – the resort about a 5 minute drive up the hill for families and was made up of a number of different buildings and different types of accommodation, and finally the Monte Cristo – individual time shared houses for the ballers up higher on the hill.

Full shot of our resort.

More shots of the waves.

Diana taking some shots.

Obligatory – writing in the sand.

Lovey dovey shit that Diana did. LOL

AND another shot of the waves. The waves were on and off with the size and height. Sometimes they would be really small, and others they could be as high as 20 ft.

Look what we found on our way back to our room. LOL

One last one before we went back in. The mist from the ocean looks awesome in person.

Somehow, Diana came up with the challenge of a rum and coke chugging challenge and we ended up doing it every night. We would have dinner, go for a walk, then hit up the bar and grab a rum and coke then go back to the room and chug. I am ashamed to say that I lost every single time. But in my defense – and I don’t care if you believe me or not – I hate drinking pop and I hate coke the most. It hurts my throat and I sound like a wuss but whatever. I also like to shit-talk a lot and the both of us get really competitive… so I hate to lose to a challenge I know I’ll lose to… BUT Diana deserved the win.

Last selfie for part I. This was after her chugging win so she’s super happy. Part II tomorrow!