Day 1 (Sunday)
after a late night of poker and gossiping until the wee hours of 4 am, Jerry swung by and picked me up at 7 am to meet up with Mike at his house. Tina and her dad picked us up 2 minutes and after sharing some info on tires and green nitrogen caps with Mr. Chen, we were headed off to the Oakland airport!
our 9 am flight with America West was on time, with only Pang checking his huge prada bag (cause of the 1.75 liter of Smirnoff Rasp in it haha). We had a few minutes, so Jerry and I went to check out the smoothies, but after waiting 10 minutes in line and with our flight being called, I just decided to get some oj and water for the plane ride.
The seating was assigned and I had an aisle seat, which ended up making me in the last boarding group #6, whereas Pang was in group 2 and Jerry and Tina were in 4.. so I had to sadly wave bye to them for a few minutes haha. We had a stopover in Arizona, where we walked like 5 blocks (even with Jerry's bum ankle) to the other terminal/gate. Tina and I by-passed the walking escalators heh. As I walked to the gate, I saw this azn girl turned around smiling and waving at me... at first i was like "ooh??".. then i noticed it was Tami! haha.. that was pretty funny. Turns out Tami decided to cash in her extra time (she would've arrived in cabo 2 hours before us) waiting for us at the Phoenix airport instead of at the hotel. FOur of us went to get some pretzels while Pang watched our bags... delicious. The flight to Cabo was smooth, only one baby crying, to which the odd lady next to me (who was staring at my pretzel when we first sat down) said to me "they need to give these babies demerol before the flight".. twice! Quite scary.. but she did have a really cute and calm puppy in a little plastic cage next to her that would stick its head out during the flight and she would feed it peanuts.
We landed and "de-planed" out of the plane into the open air, where the nice 98 degree weather greeted us with a blast. After clearing through the passport stamping place, we had to press this button at the security/immigration check point. Amusingly, this button would produce a green or red light at random, meaning green to pass and red meant you were stopped and your bags were checked. Tami and Tina somehow went through the line next to me as a 'duo', pressed the button once for both of them and got green and passed. I watched as 3 girls before me pressed and got red, so I picked that line/button.. and pushed.. for a 4th straight RED WHAMMY! Haha.. fortunately I had all my stuff packed neatly with zip ties on my socks and stuff, so the guard just rifled through quickly and I was free to go. As we waited for Mike to get his bag from the carousel, Tami took the first international bite of Teacake's Apricot/Almond cookie. The airport bathroom was pretty dirty, lotsa flies and some flooded water on the ground.. gross.
As we walked out of the airport, we were immediately greeted by a few potential timeshare salespeople, but we circumvented those and found someone that seemed legit and he directed us to a shuttle for $90 for the 5 of us. At the time, the only other option was $17 a piece for a taxi, i think. On the drive to Playa Grande, we saw this combo oil change/dentista store along with odd stoplights, some having 2 red circles at the same time. Not knowing that we weren't supposed to tip cabbies, I gave him $2, and felt bad that at the moment that we were "undertipping" him. Mike waited outside while the other three of us went along with Jerry to go check in, as we were 'supposed' to only have 4 in the room. During the 10 minutes of sitting by our luggage while Jerry waited in the long check-in line, we were approached at least 3 times by activity directors and what not. Along with the room cards, we got 4 towel cards which had the words "each towel card not returned during check-out will cost $16". $16 !! As we walked over to our building, a shuttle came by, so Jerry, Tina, and I jumped on... only to discover we were only 40 feet away from our building hah.
Our room was 1253, and it was a little confusing at first about how the electricity worked in the room, but basically you have to stick a card into the slot on the wall by the door, to keep the electricity on. If you take the card out, the circuit breaker for all but the fridge and tv's will trip off, I think this is mostly for decreasing the A/C cost. Also, if one of the balcony doors are open, the AC will also not turn on. The room had cement/ceramic tiled floors. Our promise of a two huge beds plus a foldaway turned out to be one bedroom (with a queen), a full-sized futon out in the living room, plus a murphy bed inside a dresser haha. At least there were two full bathrooms and a full kitchen. Amazingly there was also wifi avail as well, which would turn out to be a real blessing since Mike brought his laptop and we could listen to shoutcast and peeps could check e-mail and what not. Immediately, the four of us (minus Mike who wanted to sleep, as due to his 4 straight days/nights of partying BEFORE the trip), jumped into our swim suits and headed down for the pool. This would be one of the only 2 times that we would ride in the elevator at the resort.
There were three pools, the lower one with also a hot tub, the middle one with a water volleyball and a bar, and a huge upper-pool with a waterfall, an even shallower wading'ish pool with an island in the middle, and yet another larger hot tub. We started off by trying to hit up the in-pool bar. Jerry and Tina went in while Tina and I waited along the side, getting in our first rays standing still. This white woman next to Party Chen tried to "teach" her about a wonderful discovery of a drink called Midori Sour... haha. She must've been from the midwest or something. Not only did the drinks take forever to acquire, as Jerry must've spent at least 14 minutes just wading there waiting, but the Jack & Coke he got me was extremely weak.. it was literally a 'splash' of jd. The midori sours were also subpar.. combo'd with the woman telling Tina that she should flash the bartender for higher alcohol content hah. While standing there, Tami shared with me her theory of suntanning while perpendicular to the sun. very vital for the remainder of the trip! We went to the highest pool, took a pic of our "pre-tanned" selves, and eventually took some dips. The pool water felt kinda thick, no doubt from all the sunblock floating around.
Went back and woke Pang up so we could go grab some dinner at Mi Casa, as recommended to us by Agnes. we walked along the wharf for the first time, almost got ran over while trying to cross the road, and stopped by a shanty of a store to pick up a $3 pump to later pump up the floaties that Mike had brought. It's funny seeing how easy it is to buy what usually would be prescription drugs for us at home, but are easily available at every "discount pharmacy" on every corner.. not to mention the steroids. We finally found Mi Casa, which was next to church, after asking for some directions and having to walk down a sorta sketchy dark alleyway (and a piece of poop on the sidewalk). There was at least a 20 minute wait, so Mike and I went to a corner store 4 blocks down to purchase some water and gatorade, just in case they weren't open when we had finished dinner cause it was already about 9:30 pm. When Mike asked the cashier girl what time they closed, she responded with a "ten fift..", and he couldn't decipher if she meant 10:15 or 10 50... so we decided to just buy the stuff now just in case. We trotted back with one of those huge 5 gallon jugs, 4 gatorades, and a 3 liter of 7-up (for Mike's rasp smirnoff). Those 3 liters of sodas were pretty scary looking. We arrived back in perfect timing, as they were just about to seat us. Tami and Tina had ordered these tasty mango and strawberry margaritas, and thus went our cautiousness of drinking mexican water cause of course the margaritas are blended with ice. Anyways, the menu items were all awesome, our appetizers were terrific, especially the pork ribs with the meat that seemed to literally melt off the bone. I had some pretty good beef enchiladas. During dinner, the mariachi band came over and Mike had them serenade Tami, and they sang "besame" and convinced Tami to smooch Mike on the cheek twice haha. The only disappointing part about the meal was how slow our waiter was, even tho he was very polite and nice. His "1 more minute.." would be like 10 minutes, as it took forever to get the bill at the end. The stroll back was pleasant except for having to lug the 5 gallon water back and feeling like the handle might snap off, but everyone took a turn carrying it for a bit. Definitely well worth the trade-off for not having a stomachache! On our way in, we ran into this young guy and his gf, both of whom were mighty toasted. The guy told us not to go to the giggling marlin cause they were unfair in judging the talent contest, apparently his moonwalk and handstand wasn't enough. He then went off about So I Married an Axe murderer being the best movie. We also ran into two more guys smoking along the stairwell on the 2nd floor, they were nice and said hi.
Back in the room, Jerry took the dresser bed, Pang and I camped in the other room, and the Chens took the futon. The 4 of us had some difficulties figuring out how to convert the futon into bed mode until Pang mentioned we had to make a V and squeeze it together.. voila! We discovered that we have 3 local channels and 15 various movie channels from HBO to Skinamax Super Plus Extended Night edition, all of which had different volume settings! Current Root Beer Barrel count is at 36
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Ooooh Hilary.. Wish me home!