Sometimes the best days ever are the ones when you have no idea what’s going to happen. I left the ship this morning with time on my hands and exactly ten dollars (okay 12) in my pocket, I did not think I’d be doing much of anything except maybe buying a soft drink. I had a vague notion of looking at shoreside tours but the water taxi operators are you get off the ship are super aggressive and I always find myself loathe to reward what feels like harassment (if I want a tour I will go find one, chasing me down the pier and insulting me when I tell you to leave me alone will not make me buy from you).
So I wandered through the pier in the estimated direction to downtown and just as I’m leaving the marina there is one more tour place. Not pushy, the people are nice and the cost of a water taxi tour out to the arch? $10! For over an hour.
I’ve called in Cabo many times and I’ve only ever seen the rock formations from a distance. Up close? It’s hard to describe how beautiful they really are. The arch is stunning, but it’s the immensity of the formations surrounding it that make it breathtaking. You feel as though you are the absolutely smallest thing in the universe, just a little tiny spec. As the little girl who once squealed with joy to ride the wake of a ferry in a tiny metal motorboat (man were my parents mad), this is my version of paradise. Salt water? Fixes practically anything. The boat is small and the swells from the Pacific are massive, rolling in more like small walls than waves.
The boat was glass bottom, so we could see schools if thousands of multi-coloured fish dashing about under the hull. I think Nemo was in there somewhere.
When we reached the beach those of us too short to climb out of the boat and into the swells ourselves were basically bridal carried from the boat to the shore, which definitely made me giggle. But it’s easy to see why there are locals there working for tips by carrying people off the boats – the undertow is so strong and the waves so huge that if you try and get yourself out and you’re on the smaller side? You’re getting swept off your feet, no questions asked.
I’m not built for the Mexican heat so after about a half hour of hiking around taking pictures of all the caves and cliffs (which seem to stretch up forever) I found myself a spot in the shade to people watch until the boat came to pick us back up. If I ever do this again, I will have to be a little more prepared and bring myself an umbrella and beach towel! And a book, most definitely a book.
We had a bit of an adventure getting back to the marina, because the boat that had dropped us off didn’t come back at the appointed time to pick us back up! Thankfully, the people who I had shared the boat with happened to also be guests on our charter and the guests this week? They are super nice, so they paid to get us all back to shore safely. They are also refusing to let me pay them back, and trust me I’ve tried!
All in all, there are certainly worse ways to spend a day than being out in the sunshine and completely awed by just how big nature really is.