Follow along on our trip to Los Cabos, Mexico and our fantastic stay at the Hilton Los Cabos!
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April 3 – 10, 2010
Let’s just say Dad has a healthy addiction to collecting frequent flier miles and hotel points. And he takes advantage of them by cashing in and arranging some trips that will create lasting memories in our lives. With our two munchkins in school, the times available when we can all get away are limited. Therefore, we took advantage of the 2010 Spring Break to arrange a trip to the Los Cabos area in Mexico. Dad has been hearing on Flyertalk how truly fantastic the Los Cabos Hilton is and we decided to go for it because on January 15th Hilton decided to pretty much gut the HHonors frequent guest loyalty program as they increased substantially the number of points required for free nights. So, Dad on January 14th decided it is time to cash in some points before the increase! Voila, 6 nights at the Los Cabos Hilton for 175,000 Hilton Honors points. The flights were pretty much free (other than taxes) because Dad had plenty of Delta vouchers from the superb ThankYou Network points from Citibank (they killed that deal on February 28th of last year and Dad cashed in his points for vouchers on February 27th!). Anyways, to make the long story short, this is another vacation pretty much paid for (airfare and lodging) by Dad’s hobby…Needless to say, mommy and the kids love Dad’s hobby, lol.
We left on April 3 from Detroit. We flew Detroit to Minneapolis first and then off to Cabo San Lucas on Delta Airlines. Dad is now just Silver Elite with Delta and to his shock and amazement Delta upgraded him to first class. Silver is the lowest of the low in Elites and Delta is swimming with Elites these days! Anyways, Dad rode up front on the short flight and let Mommy ride up front in the long flight. Flights were former Northwest crew, they did a great job as usual. Very smooth flights.
The airport in the Los Cabos area, we walked to the terminal:
If you come here, you will be overwhelmed by the timeshare hawks sales people, they are everywhere! We got a nice private car to take us to our hotel at $65. Surprisingly, the taxi rides back to the airport are about $30-$35…Call it the airport clique. Oh well, we enjoyed the ride to the hotel…so much cacti!
We were warned that this Hilton hotel knows how to do “service”. But I must admit even I was impressed by the first moment I stopped on the property. How about a margarita as we are checking in? Ditto. I had emailed them earlier that we are celebrating our anniversary and as we walked into our room we were faced with this:
and this
and this with an excellent bottle of local wine
We did not receive an upgrade to a suite but, as Gold Elites, we received 4 coupons for continental breakfast for each morning of our stay. The standard rooms were superb but the one thing we have missed the most is waking up to this view every morning
The hotel is in front of a very nice private beach at the East coast of the Baja Califorina peninsula at the Sea of Cortez. Waves big enough for surfing were common every day. The water is very deep and the currents are very strong. The only area suitable for swimming was the area inside those rocks at the top left of the pic below:
The hotel has two huge pools, the biggest one is called Infinity and the kids played the vast majority of their time in it! This is a place to get away from it all and just relax, for example 🙂
Starting to get later in the day
During the week we were there they had a bunch of activities for the kids every day. One was a movie by the 2nd pool at 7.30 pm with free popcorn and drinks for the kids
Did I say we loved this view from our balcony?
Every morning (except one) Mom and Dad hit the Health Fitness room for an hour workout very early. And then when kids woke up, every morning we enjoyed the amazing breakfast buffet. As mentioned previously, we had breakfast coupons for the continental breakfast given to us because dad is a Gold Elite with Hilton. We upgraded Mom and Dad to the full buffet at a price of $10 each and they let the kids slide. We had everything here: from omelets made to order, to a wide variety of fruits, fruit juices, pastries, breads, meats, cheeses and many local entrees…You name it, they had it! Again, fantastic service…guitarist playing some local ballads, called by your individual names, wow!
the omelet guy
We had breakfast and lunch together every day 🙂
Now, let’s talk about Jorge, the pool concierge employee. We will never forget him and the kids will certainly remember him for many years. He is in charge of keeping everyone at the pool happy. Some of his famous lines: “Anything is possible here….if you believe” He even got the kids brand new Ipods to enjoy for the duration of our stay at no charge! And they also had two rooms set up with game stations so son spent some time there of course.
At the left is the Jacuzzi. There are a couple of swim up bars too.
And now meet Pepe, the resident iguana
We spent our first couple of days at the hotel and taking it all in
Check out the form 🙂
On the way to the hotel from the airport, again from advice of fellow Flyertalkers (see flyertalk.com, a website of travel enthusiasts Dad is a member of since 1999), we asked the driver to stop at the local MEGA store (think Wal Mart/Meijer) in San Jose del Cabo and get some food and drinks. And so we did but by Monday night we had run out of things to eat and we got the kids some pizza with room service. Well, the pizza was good but at $20 for a small size pizza reiterated what we were told by others: everything is expensive at this hotel so stock up at MEGA. By the way, if you walked in to the Breakfast Buffet it would cost $28 USD!
Night is approaching, the lights come on, beautiful
Monday morning at breakfast. I have no idea what son is doing here
What we miss the most is just hanging out at the breakfast area in the morning and enjoying the superb coffee feeling the nice breeze and listening to the guitarist play ballads for us
bliss
the guy at the back is coming to fill up my coffee mug….again 🙂
We rented a car at the National desk inside the hotel for a couple of days. First stop was the MEGA store, we are right outside it at the pic below
Then we toured the small San Jose del Cabo town, here is the main square
On the way to Cabo San Lucas. We stopped at this scenic post to take some pictures of the del Cabo coast. There are numerous resorts here.
We had some amazing coconuts from this kiosk here:
We loved it
Then we drove to Cabo San Lucas, which is a lot more developed and a Spring Break destination. The Marina is full of boats as you can see
Many outdoor by the marina bars and places to hang out
Ceviche and margarita, yummy
Walk along the pier
The pirate in yellow is a real person….We thought it was a statute and as we walked he moved suddenly and pointed the gun at us, scared us silly!
Many excursion boats giving tours to local beaches and the famous arches at the very end of the Peninsula where Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific Ocean
As I said, this place is a major party destination for Spring Breakers. Loud
The next day we drove to Todos Santos, about 80 miles north of Cabo San Lucas along the Pacific Ocean coast. Many artists in this place. This is the famous Hotel California from the Eagles song.
Had a swim at the beach in Cabos San Lucas:
and we had some amazing fish tacos at a shop full of locals. We even had the guy behind son sing some really nice songs for us with his guitar…we really enjoyed this meal!
This is the MEGA store where we bought lots of food to avoid the ridiculously high Hilton resort prices. It was highly recommended by fellow FlyerTalkers and, as usual, their advice was right on target!
This is our standard room. The white things open up next to the bathroom tub. I should have taken more pics of the room, oh well.
Too much swimming
Walking along the beach in front of the hotel
beach volleyball anyone?
Flexing for the camera 🙂
Oh God,the buffet again…I am getting hungry 🙂
Beautiful picture
Employees in the white hats are everywhere, when they say “at your service” they do mean it here!
Last day we got the kids the recommended sushi and BLT sandwich, the sushi was just amazingly delicious
Son: Let me help you sis 🙂
We only missed a day of workouts in this great Fitness Center
Jacuzzi time full of kids
They even do complimentary massages (10-15 mins), wow!
this is Jorge, the one and only Pool Concierge
We miss this view!
Check out time
Back to the airport
Finally flew Alaska Airlines, very nice!
We connected at LAX and took the red eye flight home. We had to go through Customs and Immigration in LAX, weird to not do this in Detroit
Fantastic vacation. We loved Mexico, we never got sick and never felt unsafe. The warmth and service orientation is great and this Hilton is just amazing. You don’t believe me, read the reviews at trip advisor here:
Thank you for reading my blog!
TBB
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