Images From Baja Sur, Part 2

As promised, here are the images from our last couple of days in Baja Sur. Sorry it's taken so long to get to them, but these sorts of posts are a lot of work.

The afternoon that I proposed to Melissa, I was suffering from a vicious sunburn on my scalp, a burn acquired during the day's hatless boat trip. The effects of that sunburn might have added to the dizziness that I felt out on the beach beside the Presidente at sundown last Saturday, but in truth I was as nervous as I've ever been about what Melissa would say. As I stood there in the dying light trying to summon up the courage to ask the question a huge California Gray Whale breached in the ocean directly offshore from us, shooting straight out of the water and landing with a splash before resubmerging. This is the God's honest truth. I'd never seen anything like that in my life. It threw me off my game for a moment, but in an instant I realized that this amazing sight was the universe's way of giving it's blessing to what I was about to do.

I couldn't remember any of the things I had meant to say to her, but I did manage to get the key question out. She said yes, and from somewhere back at the hotel (this is also the God's honest truth) the theme from Star Wars began to play. How perfect is that?

Phone calls from the Presidente back to the States ran at $4.00 a minute, so the next day we decided to walk into San Jose del Cabo to try to find a payphone, which we had heard offered much cheaper rates. We had no luck finding a payphone that served our purposes, but it was a nice chance to wander around and get to know San Jose. Here's a picture Melissa really likes of us at San Jose's City Hall:

And this is the town square, with church in the background. As you can see, San Jose is so much more relaxed and mellow than it's party-all-the-time neighbor Cabo San Lucas.

Of course, one thing both towns have in common (along with pretty much the entire Baja Peninsula) are gorgeous beaches. But in San Jose, the beaches offer a lot of elbow room. The picture below was taken Sunday, and it's very close to the spot where I proposed to Melissa.

Monday was our final day in Baja, and so we took the shuttle back to Cabo San Lucas to make the requisite stops (El Squid Roe, Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo, etc.) and decided to catch a water taxi out to Lover's Beach and The Arch. This spontaneous side-trip turned out to be one of the real highlights, and gave us some of my favorite pictures:

I would finish the whole tale up here, but once again blogger is proving pathologically unable to handle more than a few pictures in a single post. A very brief Part 3 will be coming shortly. Sorry once again for the limitations of the format.