Trip Notes

We left Oakland at 9am. Picked up Halmoni and headed to the airport for an 11:20 flight to Los Cabos. Everything went well, though traveling with two kids & two carseats is never trivial.

The flight was smooth – 3 hours and change, but what I hadn’t expected until reading the notes that day was another 2 hours of driving on the other end of the journey. The flight was a bizarre juggling of Kuno & Jin with me & Ei-Nyung + Halmoni, with a C & P thrown in in completely random places for good measure.

After arriving, we needed to get the car rentals, which was more of an adventure than it should have been, even though we were forewarned of the additional $45/day in *mandatory* insurance, which more than tripled the base cost of the rental. Some folks who hadn’t read up on things ended up quite surprised, and at least one other person in line ended up storming out of the place in a huff. This is really dumb, car rental folks. Just put up honest rates and you’re gonna have a lot fewer angry customers.

We needed to get supplies & food, and we weren’t sure what was going to be in El Sargento, other than the house owners had said it was a small place, without even an ATM. So we decided to stop by a nearby supermarket, where we picked up a bunch of food. Ended up eating there, since we were all pretty hungry. Was about as good as any other lousy steam-tray style supermarket lunch, which was to say, “Not particularly good.”

Next up was the 2+ hour drive from Los Cabos to La Ventana to El Sargento. Eric led the way, and we were just following, and by the time we were on the road after getting our stuff, getting the cars, and getting food, it was already completely dark. The drive was fun, though – lots of twisty turny bits, and it was only at the end where conditions got a bit dire. I don’t know why folks put speed bumps in large streets, though, other than a handful of folks probably nuke their suspensions hitting them at way to fast, because there’s no warning they’re coming and few clearly posted speed markers. Still, we noticed them all, nothing bad happened.

Last bits of the drive were on dirt roads – turns out El Sargento is a pretty small town. The house we’re in is pretty nice – a main living area connected to an open kitchen, along with three bedrooms & two bathrooms. You can go up onto the roof easily & look at the stars. It’s not a huge place, but it does have direct beach access by walking down a bunch of stairs, which makes it TOTALLY AWESOME.

Every day basically starts on the beach. Eric’s done a lot of kiteboarding, but for us, it’s mostly just playing in the sand and some in the surf. I went out and snorkeled for a bit – it’s fine – there’s some coral, and there are a handful of cool fish, but at least so far it’s been too murky and too choppy to really be something to *cough cough* write home about. Eric also got stung by a jellyfish, so I’ve been a little paranoid floating around out there.

We’ve cooked a lot of fish tacos, made tons of guacamole and had a lot of good food, mostly home-made. We went out to eat at Las Palmas last night, and it was fine, but it wasn’t leagues better than what we’re making out of the local ingredients. The one notable exception was their beef tacos, which were delicious. I could have eaten a bunch more of those. We’ve been getting fish from a local place that catches whatever that day, and it’s been great.

The kids are getting along as well as can be expected. They squabble over stuff here and there, but for the most part, are content to run around and have adventures basically non-stop. It’s nice to see J & K so happy to be running around on their own. J & I read through “How to Train Your Dragon”, and I was surprised by how not at all like the movie it is. We also read through “The Complete Book of Dragons”, which was fun – J’s drawn a lot of dragons over the last few days.

K has really gotten down his “Yes” on this trip. He’s been using it sporadically before, but now you can ask him almost anything with a yes/no answer, and he’ll answer you. You might have to ask a few times to get an *accurate* response, but he’s way more communicative now as a result, which is awesome. He’s been having a *blast*, and it’s great to see. He runs around a lot with the bigger kids, and when he’s not up to that, he’s hanging out/spending time with Halmoni. He’s still not sleeping well, which is not great, but ah, well. What can you do?

We’ve shuffled sleeping arrangements around a lot. Most nights, J is in Halmoni’s room, but one night I slept in there while J & C slept in the same bed. Last night, I slept with K while Ei-Nyung slept out on a couch in the living room, and that didn’t go particularly well for anyone. Still, feels like things are slowly getting better. Or I’m delusional. I dunno. K was sick for a bit, and he’s still stuffy, but it seems like he’s on the upswing, at least. Nothing gets that kid down. When he’s awake, he’s happy. When he’s asleep, he’s fine. The only time he’s sad is when he’s making the transition either way.

Today we hiked for about an hour up and down the beach trying (unsuccessfully) to find hot springs. More later, but so far, it’s been a really nice trip.