Cruisin' Cabo

Our trips to Mexico have become so routine that we've established a few Mexico-holiday traditions.  Not "Mexican-holiday" traditions: we don't spend a day making tamales with our family, or watching luchadores hit each other with folding-chairs.  But, our traditions do revolve around food and folding-chairs, so it practically makes us local.

We generally bounce between the pool and the beach, then go out in the afternoon for an early dinner.  If Cabo had early-bird dinner specials, we'd shame the senior citizens with our prompt arrivals.  Then it's a stroll through town and off to bed.  When that routine happens year after year, it becomes tradition.

Grady's been to Mexico before, but not Cabo, and so he was initiated into the fraternity of gringos this trip. For starters, our Cabo-Thanksgiving tradition is eating at El Pollo de Oro.   Except for the taco-stand by the bus stop and the churro vendor on the corner, it's our favorite restaurant least likely to seat a gringo.  Meaning, it's awesome.  We forfeit the traditional turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie for mole' enchiladas, fish veracruz, ribs, and micheladas.  It's a great trade.

The expansion of our family has slightly changed or evolved our traditions.  Regina and I used to get barraged with requests to buy drugs and check out local strippers.  Add one child, those solicitations get cut by three-quarters, add another and they drop to zero.  Now we just turn down requests to see timeshare presentations or beach vendors selling fake silver jewelry.

Our pool traditions, too, have morphed from how many Dirty Monkeys is it possible to order during Happy Hour, to watching Grady cruise the pool chairs and seeing how high I can toss Dylan in the air (while we're in the pool, of course).  And, instead of Cabo Wabo for dinner and music, the Giggling Marlin for upside down tequila shots, and El Squid Roe for ... I forget, now it's Ni How Kai Lan in Spanish and reading in bed.

This isn't by any means a compliant.  I love watching Grady do laps in his lounge-chair playpen and seeing Dylan's confidence in the water expand to the point I get nervous.  And I'd trade a good mole' sauce and a caramel churro for jello shots any day (But the bacon-wrapped hot dogs from the street- stand? Not as good as it sounds.  I'd opt for a jello shot over those again).  And who knows, once Grady is able to swim around on his own, he may just fold up a pool chair and crack it over my head, just like a real luchador.  Now that would be a Cabo tradition worth starting.