Cabo: Travel and Hotel

As I mentioned in my synopsis…we almost missed our flight out to Cabo. This was mostly my fault because I underestimated the time we would need to get to the airport by AND I thought our flights had seats assigned and thus didn’t need to check in ahead of time. WRONG.

Obvs…we made it but not without some worried brows and hastened steps to get to the gate on time. Our names were even on the board and the lady was saying them over the loud speaker and everything.

EMBARRASSING!

We missed any opportunity to pick up breakfast or Starbucks before getting on the plane so I had to get an overpriced snack plate to tide me over. I had a couple of protein bars and nuts but they were just not cutting it!

We stopped in San Diego and had to get off the plane just to get back on again, so we were able to get our coffee infusion then. Thank goodness.

***Important note The thing I was MOST worried about for this trip was that my passport was in my maiden name. I was just convinced that they would not let me into or out of Mexico because of this. I brought my marriage license just in case but it turned out that it really wasn’t a problem. Like at all. The only blip was when we scanned our passports into the machines when we checked in to get boarding passes. A message came up saying “The name on the passport does not match. Is this correct?” Then you check yes and its like “ok, groovy” (Well, not really, but basically). Then at the gates and customs and stuff they just check the passport against the docs you fill out, not necessarily your travel info. So it all worked out in the end.

Ok back to our flight to Cabo. We thought it was a little strange that isles 12, 13 and 14 were missing?

View coming into the airport

One more tiny freak out moment when we got there. We got through customs in a jiffy and then went to wait for our bags.

And wait

And wait

Everyone else seemed to be getting their bags, but not us. My heart started beating a little quickly at this point.

Then the conveyor belt stopped.

And our bags were the last two that came out of the shoot. Like literally they came out and then the thing stopped. Whew!

Once you get out of the bag section you are dumped immediately into the “we are going to confuse you and trick you into buying a time share” room that seems to have no doors and a thousand people in there pretending to be your ride.

Very tricky to navigate.

The guy who approached us even seemed to know our hotel and shuttle service and everything. Luckily our shuttle service gave us a very clear map of exactly where to go and what to avoid so we didn’t get tripped up.

We found the door and after saying “No” like a thousand times, we found our guy and he called the shuttle.

This was also outside the airport.

They can NOT get tequila in you fast enough.

We were on our way to our all inclusive resort though so no time or money for any of this nonsense. Off we went to the beautiful RIU Palace.

This is where all the vans/taxis/buses pull up. The landscape is very much desert so this had a real “southwest” theme going on with lots of cactus and stuff outside.

This is the gorgeous open air lobby. We were constantly wondering if it EVER rains there at all because there is so much area that is just exposed with no way of closing it off. I’m sure it happens from time to time but must be pretty rare.

There was no free internet in the rooms, but you could get on WiFi for 90 min every 24 hours but only while sitting in the lobby. So every now and then we would kick it in the lobby with our phones or computers to play games catch up on anything important going on at home.

All of the ashtrays around the property were stamped with RIU. We had an irresistible urge to mess it up every time we saw one.

Once you check in they give you the “all inclusive wristband”. I didn’t really understand the purpose of these because I think the whole place is all inclusive, but I think it must have something to do with them keeping track of you and identifying you. We went into the marina a couple of times and people would yell out “hey you need a water taxi to RIU?” And I would tell Paul, “How do they KNOW???” He just gave me a look and then lifted his wrist and I was like “oooooohhhhh”. *palm to forehead*

We were prisoners 18186 and 18185

Then we got to our room!

and were greeted with this

I think its cute that they do this, but the eyeball stickers? Really? Not necessary.

There was a stocked fridge that they would restock every days. Yes days. See two pictures down. The water bottles were our best friends. We sucked all of them down every day or hid them so they would always give us more the next day and we would never be without.

Can’t forget the liquor. Huge bottles behind lock and key but if you drain one they restock it. We think.

Paul was obsessed with this purpley lamp. It did seem to be situated oddly on the wall. Wasn’t symmetrical with another lamp, didn’t really provide any light, just a random purple lamp on the wall.

Our view from the balcony.

The beach in front of the hotel was not swimmable due to the current and the undertow. It was still pretty to look at and hear the waves all the time. We hung out on the beach a couple of nights and watched some dumb drunk people try no to get knocked over by the waves. We kept counting them to make sure they were all still there. Then we made out some. More married people PDA. Still gross.

There were two ginormous pools on each side of the resort. One was the just regular pool and the other was the “activity” pool. They would put up a vollyball net, have water aerobics and other fun activities.

They also had some little kiddy pools and then two swim up bar pools. Lots of options for pools which was great!

There were so many levels to this hotel it was easy to get confused. The beach was technically the first level and then the pool level where they served the lunch buffet and snacks. Then there was another level where the dinner/breakfast buffet was along with the entertainment bar and area. Then you have the lobby level where there was another huge bar that had an awesome view of the beach and the Arch/Lovers Beach.

This is taken from the lobby bar area. View of Lovers Beach and The Arch. The pool in this picture is one of the swim up bar pools.

We only went to one of the nightly shows that they had at the hotel. Every night when they did the entertainment they had some vendors come as well. Sunday and Wednesday they had people selling all kinds of souvenirs and gifts and then on Mon and Tue and Thurs they had a couple of guys painting some pretty cool pics and selling them.

We watched the Michael Jackson show and it was surprisingly good. The entertainment we saw in Jamaica was soo terrible that we didn’t have high expectations for this, but they did a really good job and the dancing was fun and the lip syncing was pretty spot on. Good job on entertaining us!!

The hotel gift shop was pretty small and cheesy but what was on the window seemed to entertain us even more than Michael Jackson. Maybe we had one too many drinks before we were somehow entranced with the shop and all the fun things we found on the window.

And these horribly graphic images on the cigar and cigarette packages were just awesome. We could not get over how dramatic they were. They are like the telenovelas of cigarette packages. Why we don’t do this in the US, I don’t know, but we should!! People are always loosing their legs from smoking right?

And there you have it! Our review of RIU palace was def 4.5 out of 5 stars. Everyone was super friendly and helpful. There were like a million people working so your drinks were always refilled and plates taken away in a jiffy. The only think we could even think to complain about was that the bed was a little hard and the bedding itself could have been a little more fluffy. Otherwise, it was a great all- inclusive that I highly recommend to anyone traveling to Cabo san Lucas!

Tagged as: Cabo san Lucas, hotel, Mexico, passport in maiden name, RIU palace, travel, vacation