Years of Poems and Spirits

I first heard of the wild flowers in CA many many years ago. Since then, we have been hoping to experience the spring colors ourself.
We finally made the trip this Spring thanks to a friend of Lisa’s visiting her from Joyo. Li Bo is a diehard “Donkey Friend” so she is happy to tag along and I am happy I have an excuse.
This trip rescued me from the insanity of writing papers (aka the briddled ambition).
We flew down to SF, rented a car and the route is:
1. SF HW 101, 280, 17 then 17-mile loop. Stopped at a strawberry farm and had lunch at pebble beach.
2. Was hoping to drive 4 hours to San Semion (Hearst Castle) the same day but just couldn’t make it. The beautiful but winding CA SR-1 is such a temptress that we couldn’t help but stop frequently to suck in the ocean, the mountain, the wave and the sky.
3. A fire crew putting off wild fire finally dashed our hope. We stopped at Ragged Pt. Inn, 15 miles south of San Simeon. Small but beautiful place to stay.
4. Finally visited San Simeon the next day. Somehow I was obsessed with the Hearst Castle. Now finally the complex is dissolved and curse lifted.
5. From Hearst Castle, drove east toward Lancaster, CA. CA SR-58 was a pleasant surprise. Rolling hills covered in fresh green, foraging cattles and spring breeze … Reminded me of driving along the Shenandoah Valley many many years ago. I suddenly became very nostalgic.
6. Before settling down in Lancaster, we snapped some pictures of the sleeping poppy flowers in sunset.
7. The Antelope State Poppy Reserve and beyond: speechless, shameless indulgence for the eyes. Only the pictures can tell the story now.

Song and I wanted to go to a sunny, warm ocean front to escape from the depressing Seattle winter. We settled on Los Cabos over Hawaii because the it is the rainny season in Hawaii and we thought Cabos, being part of Mexico, would be a cheaper option.

Boy, were we wrong about Cabos being cheap! For a while, I thought I made the right choice when looking around at price tags until I found out they were in … U.S. dollars! A three-mile taxi ride costs $12, car rental starts at $70 a day, the cheapest half-day snorkeling trip is over $100 per person … Even a big Mac costs over $8–more than it does in Seattle!

For a moment, I felt we were trapped: we’ve already committed to a week-long stay. But unless we stayed inside hotel eating cookies everyday, we could easily spend $2000 more than budgetted!

Soon, I realized that there was a reason why everything was so expensive and there was a way out of this bind. The key? One word: timeshare.

Yes, timeshare industry attracts thousands of middle class Americans and Canadians with excess income; Timeshare provides good jobs for the locals; Almost every hotel or resort has a timeshare program; Many locals–street vendors, bartenders, restaurant waiters, taxi drivers, tour guides … are timeshare referrers. In short, Los Cabos is built by timeshare, of timeshare and for timeshare.

To entice people to listen to presentations, timeshare vendors offer deep (between 60%-100%) discounts on almost everything. It is like a currency–you can get vouchers for lodging, food, rental, activities and tours. To us, this means that we either have to pay the inflated price on everything or to earn the equivalant by going to sales presentations. What should we do?

A presentation lasts at least two hours. Because a sales rep gets either 10% or nothing for a day’s work, you will be treated with thousands dollar-worth of intensity. If you fail them, you will be cursed behind your back as though you have stolen thousands of dollars from them. Timeshare sales rep is an unique specimen that lives on anticipation, disappointment, ecstacy and anger everyday.

Still, we chose to earn our vacation. The first presentation lasted over four hours; The second two and half . The last, just over two. As we were getting more fluent at how to say No, the conversation got uglier linearly too.

But we have to: the first one gives us $800 off lodging (from an Expedia quoted $1400) and $200 dinning. The second one gives us almost-free tickets to “Swim with Dolphins” (although I am not a circus-goer–either on land or in water, Song is dying to pat those cute creatures, ohhhh …). The third one gives us free deep-sea fishing trip! A $250/person value! And wait there is more …

If anything, we certainly did as Romans when in Rome, so to speak.

1. Los Cabos: a county/region name because having two towns named Cabo (or cave, lands’s end, or army private?): Cabo San Lucas–where we are staying, and San Jose del Cabo.
2. We saw gray whales puffing and leaping out of water from our hotel room! I thought they are not supposed to be here till late Dec? Thanks to global warming I guess … heyhey, not bad.
3. Local economy: STRANGE!
a. The “invitacion” economy. Timeshare sales dominates and fuels tourism: we got a 60% discount on our hotel stay for listening to a presentation. Although I worked for a timeshare company before, I was still green in the handling pressure sale.
b. The dollar economy. When I pay peso, people frawn on me as if I am the only cash user in the Visa commercial.
c. The stratified/tiered pricing. Locals pay different prices, which is perhaps one tenth of what we pay for food and transportation. An average dinner in a so-so restaurant downtown–not even waterfront, just two dishes with a Margarita, cost us $60!
d. Colonialized economy: full of Gringos shopping in/with Walmart, Costco, McDonalds, Harley Davidson, Hummer, etc. More so than any place I have been to.
4. People we met: mostly old and retired. But met a woman who overheard our conversation and spoke Mandarin back. She can write Sanskrit too! And shared with us on how to get out a presentation: “just tell them, we are here for the cash back and the discount. Sorry for your time, but our time is up.” Ha! We will try that tomorrow.