The Cabo Sun
I know many of you have been waiting for a more detailed recap of our trip to the Cabo San Lucas area. If you’ve read my travel posts, you know that it’s never only about the travel 🙂 I always include life lessons and epiphanies that we experience along the way and trust me there is never a shortage.
When we looked at the calendar and realized that winter break of 2022 fell over Chanukah, we panicked just a little. We really look forward to getting away with the family and getting a break from winter. When you have nine months of winter and you live very busy lives in service of the community, it’s crucial to schedule some sun and family time. Being that we are the Shluchim at Chabad Lubavitch of Montana, it’s vital that we live up to our communal responsibility and celebrate Chanukah with our beloved community and the kids break and Chanukah seemed like a head on conflict. After discussing many Different options and scenarios we concluded that we can be here in Bozeman for the first few days of the holiday, celebrating Chanukah with our big Chanukah Bash, Menorah Parade and downtown lightning, Party up at Big Sky and a Chanukah event with the Governor at the State Capitol, and then we can head out with the fam. That’s what we did, and it ended up working out great thank G-d.
The other thing we decided was that we wouldn’t tell the kids! We don’t usually tell our kids about trips until a few days before, I find that it’s just much easier all around, but this time we decided not to tell them at all. Which meant that I had to figure out how to pack in secret, hide everything, all during the week of juggling Chanukah.
Before we decide where to go, my husband and I talk about what our goals are for the trip, what we are in the mood of (for example, hustle bustle touring or chill) and then we try to find a location that meets those criteria. I also love to go places that are less traveled (that’s the enneagram 4 in me 🙈) sometimes that happens and sometimes not. For this trip we were going for a more chill vibe, sun, and beach. The thing with beach trips is, and this is from experience, is that if you are not right on the water or you’re in a busy popular location, it’s hard to enjoy. Either your shlepping to the beach and you’re there for a bit, then the kids want to go or their hungry or tired etc.… so you leave and then they want to go back….and I find it very hard to really enjoy. It can also be uncomfortable for us to hang out on the beach where our standards of modesty aren’t possible, and it becomes more of a headache and stress than enjoyable. On the other hand, I love the beach, the water, the sun, the vibes, so I don’t give up on it so easily. We chose to research and explore the Cabo area and see if we can find something that would meet our needs and wants 😉
In Cabo proper something like that is almost impossible to find within our budget. So, we broadened our search a bit and we found that if we go a bit out of the city there are more options. Long story short, we found a home on VRBO, one hour from the airport (or so they say, we’ll talk more about that) that was literally on the Sea of Cortez. Like, you walk out the door and you’re on the beach, basically what dreams are made of. Many of you have asked, if I could send the link to the exact house we rented, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that, I love to share our travel and adventures, but I don’t think that means every single detail needs to be public. I will say is that we found this house on VRBO and it really is not hard to narrow your search to meet your needs.
Something we know to be true from all the travel we’ve done is that something is going to throw you for a loop and take you by surprise. You can be the most thorough planner and something unexpected will happen that will call upon you to adjust. The question always is what’s it gonna be 😂. Last year the weather really took us by surprise and required a huge adjustment. This year when VRBO said the house was an hour from the airport, they conveniently left out a few details. Like that it’s actually an hour and a half (the last 20 min on a dirt road) to go anywhere where there are activities, and the roads in Mexico are not like America, especially the back country roads. Oh, and the closest place to get a bottle of water is a twenty min drive on a dirt road, and an actual grocery store is all the way back in Cabo. We knew we weren’t going to be in the city, but we didn’t realize how secluded we would be. Cue adjustment. We were quite unprepared for the extent of the seclusion, that after a long day of travel, renting a car, driving to our location we didn’t have any bottled water with us, and in Mexico you cannot drink from the tap. Thank G-d for the bag of food I packed last minute just in case, we really relied on it. For dinners we got catered from Chabad and It was great!
Anyway, after the kids went to bed, Chaim and talked about some of the surprises we encountered and we both realized that when you are up for adventure, unexcepted things will happen and it just adds to the experience. Lo and Behold, the special dirt road provided us with a lot of memories, but also, we were willing to trade convenience for a secluded beach, and we would do it again.
I hope you enjoy all these behind-the-scenes details and processes that make up so much of our trip. If you came to read just about location and activities, oops 😉 not sure I know how to do that…
This trip was a real turning point for our family in the sense that we were able to really enjoy our location without having to run to do activities every day. We did two outings/activities, not including the beautiful Chabad Menorah lighting we attended at The Plaza of San Jose Del Cabo. Going anywhere included a lot of car time, which is not fun, so we chose to really limit that. We chose to go horseback riding one day and whale watching on a sailboat a different day. The rest of the time was spent at the house, going back and forth to the beach a million times, but it wasn’t a big deal because we were right there, and if one kid was done, it didn’t mean everyone had to be. CL must’ve gotten in and out of her bathing suit X8 a day, no joke.
We read books, colored a lot. Listened to stories on the YOTO player. All the kids have their own, it was awesome until Menny dropped his in the pool, which caused a lot of drama of course. All in All, I was so pleasantly surprised how little outside stimulation we needed. Being by the water and sun was what we needed. It felt so good to have foreseen that and to have chosen the right place to be. If we would’ve known how secluded it was, maybe we wouldn’t have chosen that house and we would’ve totally missed out in on this experience.
So maybe its ok not to know every detail, maybe its ok when things are not as expected. Maybe it opens opportunities we wouldn’t have allowed ourselves to have.
Here’s to not knowing everything, and escaping the frozen tundra 😂
