COLUMN: We Don't Belong Here

By Tobin Barnes
So we’ve been sitting on a shuttle bus at the Los Cabos airport for a goodly long time now. We’d paid a mustachioed bandito, sans bandoleras, named Alberto, $28 to be on this bus that would “soon” take us to our hotel. We have discovered that in Mexico “soon” is a variable, kinda like “x” in a mathematical equation.

Alberto, who is no longer around--which makes us nervous, has promised us the sun, moon, and stars, including the return of our twenty-eight bucks and two rounds of golf at the best course in Mexico, and all we have to do is attend a ninety-minute free breakfast while somebody talks.

This breakfast can be on any day of our choosing. We chose two days from this day, thinking we’ve more time down here than things planned anyway, so what the heck?

In the meantime, we’ve rightly deduced, after getting a breather from running the airport hustle and bustle, knees and elbows gauntlet, that the breakfast presentation we’ve committed ourselves to is going to be about time shares. Yeah, by all indications at the airport, sales of time shares is the number one pastime amongst the local citizenry of Los Cabos.

But also, as we’ll eventually realize, it’s more than that outside the sanctuary of our hotel. It’s not just sales of time shares, it’s sales of “you name it, senor.” The locals live, breathe, and eat the stuff.

And actually, it’s much more than even that. It’s all about separating the yankee from his dollar--the true Montezuma’s revenge. (We never did have any trouble with the water where we stayed in Los Cabos. Other Mexican locales might be a different matter.)

Anyway, the bus driver finally gets on board, but only after a “guide” arrives to accompany him. It seems the friendly guide is riding along to give us some tips about spending time in Los Cabos. And tips we get--especially about time shares (he knows Alberto), but to be honest, about other things as well.

Turns out he’s an American from East L.A. of Mexican extraction, and evidently his job is to clear the airport confusion from our minds and to seal the deal about our attendance at the breakfast. Admittedly, he’s a funny, entertaining guy, but as indicated, he’s not just along for the ride. His presence purposely reassures us, after the airport culture shock, that there truly is two rounds of golf over the horizon, not to mention other goodies.

And all we have to do is show up for the breakfast with our invitation that outlines our grab bag of perks. We resolve to do so, hoping that we’ll never see Alberto again.

By that time, we arrive at our hotel, and it’s like going from hell to heaven in one short bus ride across the limbo of local life. Once inside the hotel’s protective gates, we are immediately welcomed to paradise by a grinning bellhop who escorts us not to the registration desk but the hotel bar, where he seats us at a balcony table that overlooks an absolutely gorgeous scene of verdant palms, serene infinity pool, white sandy beach, and the azure Sea of Cortez.

Wowsa!

He says he’d like to serve us complimentary drinks while he personally takes care of the registration here in this idyllic setting. Despite the distraction of a margarita and Corona with lime, we make sure the bellhop is well aware that we’re staying at this hoity-toity joint on points, not dollars. By now, we’ve been fully alerted to the fact that we could never afford to pay for these digs. We’re massively out of our financial element.

In other words, we are not worthy! (When do we start bowing?)

Oh, he’s aware, all right, probably having already mentally down-sized his tip.

But the smile stays glued on, nevertheless. And we were to find out that it probably wasn’t forced. Every, and I mean “every” staff member we encountered during our six-night stay at that hotel was amongst the most genial and kind people we have ever met on our travels.
(Some trips we’ve taken in the United States we’ve been overwhelmed and gratified to get any genial help whatsoever along the way and not instead to be brusquely hustled elsewhere about our business.)

And when we arrive at our fifth-floor, ocean-view room, we are again blown away. It is, by gigantic leaps and bounds, the nicest place we’ve ever stayed.

Oh thank you, thank you, Hilton points! And thank you, thank you Paris Hilton, though you’re probably not involved in the day-to-day operations, are you?

(It’s quite true we couldn’t afford to pay for something like this. If we reserved the same room next year, it would cost us a whopping $619 per night, $3714 for the six nights--and that’s their second cheapest package. We’d have to take out a mortgage, for crying out loud.)

So we bucked up and decided we were going to do our level best to enjoy it, gosh darn it!

I’ll tell you more about the trip next time.