Friday, February 3rd, 2023 Queen Victoria, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
- Neil Wylie
- Mar 30, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 22, 2023
In the early hours this morning the Queen Victoria coasted into the bay at Cabo San Lucas and dropped anchor; there is no cruise dock at this port and so we will use the ships powered lifeboats to tender ashore. It’s a glorious morning, the temperature is lower than the first Mexican stop and a mild breeze is keeping us nicely cool as we take in the spectacular scene from our balcony. Cabo is a very popular vacation destination and as we watched from the balcony another cruise ship came in to join us and another ship that was already anchored in the bay. We’ve visited Cabo several times before on cruises, but it’s been many years since our last stop. Tendering is not our favorite way to visit a port; we waited until mid-morning so that all of the ships shore excursions could depart in the hope that the line would be short, but we still had to go to the theater and be issued a tender ticket and wait until our number was called. Cabo is centered around a busy yacht harbor and as we stepped onto the dock, we could see many boats berthed in the harbor, including a couple of very big superyachts. We soon realized that Cabo had changed a lot since our last visit; the yacht harbor was basically the same but the buildings surrounding it had all changed. It was just mid-morning, and the harbor-side walkways were only lightly populated with tourists, and the shops and restaurants that line the harbor were beginning to fill up. Since we had explored the inner part of the town on other visits, our plan for the day was to take a leisurely stroll around the harbor, find a café with fast internet and have lunch at a restaurant we liked the last couple of times we were in Cabo. The weather was quite mild, especially compared to Huatulco, and as we made our way along the harbor the essence of Cabo began to reveal itself; loud music from bars, lots of street sellers constantly approaching, the smell of carnitas cooking in a restaurant, crowds of tourists moving in random motion – not a great experience, but you just have to go with it. We found a café inside a place called Cabo Adventures just a little way along the first wharf and quickly tested the internet speed. A large number of the photos we’d take along the Panama Canal had not yet uploaded to the cloud due to the slow internet on the ship and so today we took the opportunity to get sync’d up. After about an hour my files were about half done, we’d finished our cool drinks, and so we packed up and continued our saunter down the harbor. Solomon’s Landing is a bar / restaurant located on a corner of the harbor, we’ve visited this place at least twice before – though this time we were surprised to find the building had completely changed, like most others in the harbor area. Even sitting in the restaurant the street sellers still managed to make enquiries and the occasional musical troupe would wander by, looking for a donation to serenade us with a reworked Santana song. The service was predicably slow, but we didn’t care – the food was good and included guacamole prepared table side and excellent carnitas tacos, all washed down with a very large margarita. After lunch we returned to the café and finished uploading our photos. Now mid-afternoon, the crowds had thickened a bit and the harbor side walkways were bustling with tourists. The line to board the tender boat was very long, and by chance we joined it right behind our friends from the ship.
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