At Home with the Houses: The Last Sail Before The Veil

Terri is getting married! To celebrate, her friends and I threw her a bachelorette party in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico!

During our senior year of college, Terri, Anna, Meike, Katie, Carla, and I spent Spring Break in Cozumel on the other side of Mexico. We have always talked about repeating our SB’07 trip, but strangely, have never gotten around to it. We’ve traveled elsewhere together in smaller groups to NYC and London and other places, but life gets in the way and all of us never found the time to go on another relaxing beach vacation … until now!

The bachelorette party invitations were flip flop luggage tags. Such a cute, unique idea!

I drove down to Houston on Wednesday evening to be able to fly out to Cabo with everyone the next morning. After landing, we took a shuttle to our home-away-from-home for the long weekend – Las Mananitas!

The condo we rented at Las Mananitas was gorgeous! It had more than enough room for all nine women, an over-sized balcony that overlooked the multiple pools and the ocean, and a fully-stocked kitchen. With a grocery store conveniently located across the street, we were able to cook at home most days, and had plenty of snacks for our late-night game nights in the living room!

We spent Thursday afternoon lounging in the pool. Even though it was August and temperatures soared into the triple digits, the pools were heated! Katie and I loved swimming around in the warm waters, while it was too hot for most of the other girls. So we decided to check out the ocean and see if it would be cooler down on the beach. Unfortunately the sea in this part of Mexico is incredibly rough, and we weren’t able to swim at all without risking our lives in the strong riptide and large waves.

That’s okay – we still had fun walking along the beach. Even me, still in that dang boot! This was my last weekend in the boot as I had had x-rays earlier in the week that confirmed my broken foot was healing very fast and very well. I felt more and more comfortable taking it off throughout the weekend, especially to swim, and practice walking. Although, the girls may say that I looked like a baby deer learning to walk, or a zombie dragging my dead foot behind me…

On Friday, we took a taxi to Chileno Beach between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. Here, swimming conditions were much better as the beach is located inside Chileno Bay. The visibility of the water was also great … we could see fish swimming around us as we walked into the water. A couple of us had snorkels, so we took turns swimming out to the small reef to observe the tropical fish.

From there, we drove down the Corridor to the other Cabo and had lunch on Medano Beach.

Last time we were all in Mexico together, we spent the week drinking Miami Vices at our all-inclusive resort. The mixture of pina colada and strawberry daiquiri is so sweet and refreshing. At lunch, it was buy-one-get-one-free, so of course, I had to order one (two) for old-time’s sake.

After lunch, we paid for a couple of umbrellas and made ourselves comfortable on the beach. We had hours to kill before our sunset cruise to El Arco, so we spent them swimming off Medano Beach. Medano is the longest swimmable beach in the region, so it was very crowded! But the water was warm and inviting, and we had fun people-watching, reading trashy celebrity gossip magazines, and chatting.

We weren’t sure how formal our sunset cruise would be, so before we headed to the marina, we stopped at a shopping center to use the bathroom and change out of our swimsuits and into some clothes.

A pelican hanging out in the marina

When we saw ourselves in the restroom’s mirrors, we were horribly shocked and immediately turned into a group of vagrants desperate to get clean. We stripped down and began bathing in the bathroom sinks to get all of the sand and salt off of ourselves. Granted, this was not some random, gross bathroom. This was a very clean, respectable bathroom inside a luxury mall. When we walked into the mall, we were sweaty and stinky and half-dressed. (Terri literally walked in wearing only her bikini while the rest of us were at least in cover-ups … although some of our cover-ups were sheer and/or short and didn’t hide much.) When we walked out of the mall, we were fully clothed, wearing makeup, and smelling shower-fresh. (Thanks to Katie for coming prepared and letting us borrow EVERYTHING, including her hair brush, deodorant, and makeup!)

We arrived at the catamaran just as it was ready to depart, and got settled in for a relaxing sunset cruise around the southern-most point of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, El Arco.

The Arch is a massive rock formation flanking two famous beaches – Lover’s Beach and Divorce Beach. Lover’s Beach is a calm, beautiful place to take a stroll with your lover. Divorce Beach is known for the dangerous, huge waves that crash against the shore, and where couples could go to throw their significant other into the ocean. I think ‘Murder Beach’ is a more appropriate name, but a little morbid, so I can see why officials went with ‘Divorce’ instead.

The rocks were full of sea lions basking in the remnants of the heat of the day. As the sun began to set, we had dinner on the boat and enjoyed sailing and taking pictures. Terri found herself a Mexican novio (boyfriend), the owner of the boat.

When his daughter, the woman in charge of the cruise, found out that it was Terri’s bachelorette party, she peer-pressured all of us (except Meike, who is five months pregnant), into taking tequila shots. Only in Mexico with these ladies do I find myself taking tequila shots. Gross!

Saturday was our last full day in Cabo. Anna and I had done some research and booked a spa day for the girls at The Grand Mayan resort down the road. The Grand Mayan was spectacular! When guests arrive, they are greeted by two huge Mayan statues leading downstairs to the pool and spa area. I felt like I was back in Egypt with the stone carvings and grand pillars.

We had lunch at the pool-side restaurant. We started with the fried plantains, and then each ordered the fresh fish tacos. Mine were shrimp with cheese and crunchy slaw and served on a colorful, fun fish platter. Muy bueno!

The spa was very cool. The resort specializes in a tequila massage. So instead of using bath salts and oil, they use sea salt as their scrub, and then tequila-infused essential oils for the massage treatment. Although the tequila smell was a little overwhelming for me, it was a very tranquil experience, just like a massage should be.

We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the resort’s pools and happy hour specials. That evening, we ventured into the city center to window shop and have dinner at a local restaurant.