The Cruise Journal - Day 3

Today was our first day in port! Well, we didn’t actually dock in a port – instead the cruise ship just hung out and we ferried back and forth between the boat and shore. But still, it’s the first time we’ve been able to get off the ship since we got on it! Our first city was Cabo San Lucas, the beach town famous for being the ultimate spring break spot. As we were pulling up to land, the view from our balcony was really quite beautiful.

The view from our balcony upon reaching Cabo.

My senior year of high school, I remember a group of about 20 girls vacationing in Cabo together and now that I’m in college, things really aren’t any different. Cabo is without question, the single most popular destination for spring break. So popular, in fact, that we ran into several sorority and fraternity groups while walking around the city. As we were sitting by the beach, we heard this boat go by as the announcers said, “are you ready to party USC?”

The USC party boat.

It was actually hilarious walking around Cabo and seeing all the different sorority girls: drunk sorority girl, crying sorority girl, desperate sorority girl, ya know, the usual.

Anyway, we didn’t have very much time in Cabo because we docked at 12 and departed at 7. Because we weren’t actually docked, we had to wait a couple hours for our ferry so we didn’t really get into Cabo until 2 pm.

Finally getting off the ship!

As expected, Cabo is a very touristy town. As soon as you get off the boat, you are accosted with people trying to sell you stuff and bars with all day “happy hours.” There artsy little statues scattered throughout the town amid the shops. It’s all very Mexican-themed like how you’d expect the Mexico section of a theme park to be decorated. I’m not sure how authentic to the true Mexico experience it is, but it makes for good tourism.

Preksha and the statue

Once you get past all the shops and people trying to sell you things, the beach is really quite beautiful.

The Cabo San Lucas beach.

It’s obviously a very popular destination for cruise ships, because there were four cruise ships (including ours) hanging out in the harbor.

The cruise ships.

Even though I’ve been to the beaches of Los Angeles fairly often, I never actually get in the water. The Pacific Ocean is really cold, yo! Figuring that it’s a lot warmer in Mexico, I figured I’d give the water a try. Turns out, the water is cool but definitely not cold. After a few seconds getting adjusted to the temperature, it was actually quite nice!

Sarah and I messing around in the water. 

One thing that I noticed in Cabo was that there seems to be a whole lot of pelicans! Even though the pelican is the state bird of Louisiana, I've never actually seen that many of them together. In Cabo, there were whole groups of them flying around and begging the fisherman for fish. They seemed really comfortable with all the people.

A fisherman teases the pelicans by offering up a fish.

Not all of the tourist traps were your traditional party boat. We saw this triple masted square rigged sailboat offering tours of the coast. It would have been 100 times cooler if it were actually sailing though. They never even opened up the sails and the boat was 100% engine powered. A little disappointing for a true sailor but a whole lot less work for the crew.

This cool looking ship has a Pirates of the Caribbean vibe to it. Too bad it’s engine powered.

Of course, we didn’t want to be left behind by the boat so we had to make it back by the 6:30 pm all aboard time. Our room being on the left side of the ship, however, had a beautiful view of the sunset as we were leaving port. We watched comfortably from our balcony as the sun set behind the cliffs.

The view of the sunset from our balcony.

Roommates! Happy to be traveling together :)

To conclude our evening after watching the sunset, we got dinner in the on-board restaurant which I like the most, Versailles. The decorations are a cheesy, movie-set take on the real Versailles, but the food is the best of the five dining options, in my opinion. We decided to get a bottle of wine to go with dinner. Preksha and Sarah left the wine selection up to me, and I picked out a Reisling from Washington State. I’ve been getting really into Washington wines lately, so I had high hopes for this selection.

The reisling from Washington that we had with dinner. I highly recommend it!

Turns out, I was not disappointed! The wine was absolutely delicious and complimented my chicken nicely. After the main course we had a cheese plate and oh my goodness the reisling paired perfectly with the sharp blue cheese. All in all, I was very pleased with my wine selection.

Anyway, night three was another night we tuned in early for movies and catching up on sleep, because the real reason we college students need spring break is to catch up on sleep!