The Long Road to Cabo, a Carnival Panorama Review: Day 9 – Cabo San Lucasfeatured

It was a long road to Cabo. Almost six consecutive days on the ship, hundreds of nautical miles, two medevacs and a dramatic detour down to Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán. We were so excited to just get off the ship for a few hours and be in Mexico that we didn’t care that it was a short port day that began when the ship anchored at 6:30 in the morning or that we had an early back on board time. This was our long-awaited port day.

Stephanie was up with the sunrise (again). I slept as much as I could, begging for an extra ten minutes every time she shook me awake and forced me up. We had plans and more sleep would just have to wait.

We met up with Mom up at the Lido Marketplace for a quick breakfast and were treated to a stunning view of Land’s End from the ship’s position off shore. You know what goes great with a nice view? Arepas. They go with just about everything.

Stephanie and I had a tour booked. Mom just wanted to relax so we parted there after breakfast and Stephanie and I headed down to deck 1 to catch a tender. Tendering gives me heartburn, not because the boats are small or the motion is high — those are the pluses of tendering. The tendering process, however, is often an unruly free-for-all, and unfortunately, Covid didn’t make that any better. I wish Carnival still offered Priority Tendering for Plats. Or even just like, tender tickets. Instead, everyone was crammed up in the stairway around Deck 1 waiting to be selected to go down to Deck 0 and board a boat.

Thankfully, we found a pocket of space that not only kept us away from the human bottleneck in the stairwells, but also got us on the next tender, and the ride itself only took about ten minutes. There were tenders just lined up waiting to board people so things did move quickly, but this is an opportunity ripe for much-needed improvement.

We docked at Plaza Embarcadero and looked for our tour sign for Whale Watching and Coastal Cruising with Open Bar. I think this tour was around $90/person. It didn’t have a whale sighting guarantee, but we were hopeful. We had such great whale watching experiences in Hawaii and Alaska earlier in the year — being able to follow the humpbacks down to Mexico was just so cool.

The tour started a little late — we checked in around 8:15 AM and were told we’d depart around 8:45 for our 9:00 tour, but we didn’t actually board the boat until 9:15ish. The boat was spacious with plenty of seating indoors and out, a friendly crew and a free-flowing open bar. We started with a cruise along Land’s End, past Lover’s Beach (and Divorce Beach) and the arch, but that was just about all of the “scenic cruising” and to be honest, we got the same “scenic cruise” from the tender. Still, Land’s End is stunningly beautiful, just as much so as I remembered it!

Afterwards, we set out for the open waters to look for some whales! The crew brought around all kinds of drinks — rum and cokes, rum punch, tequila shots, anything you could name or want — but we stuck with Diet Cokes and waters because we were running on fumes at this point of the cruise despite all of those impromptu sea days. They also passed around snacks and chips, but we were here for the fins, not the food.

The captain spotted a water spout and started speeding over, but by in the seven minutes it took us to get there, the whale had done a deep dive and wasn’t coming up anytime soon. We waited ten or so minutes before moving to another spot, where we followed two humpbacks for about 45 minutes. This was the closest we’d gotten yet and while we still haven’t seen the illusive full breech, seeing these beautiful whales swimming and flipping so gracefully is always just so exciting to me.

Our two humpback friends continued to frolic out in the open waters off the Cabo coast, and even though there was more watching to be had, this was a short two hour tour and it was time to make our way back to shore. We toasted the new year with tequila shots and danced to some oldies and it was just so dang nice being out of the ship for a bit.

The dock was different than I remembered it — I’m pretty sure Carnival uses a different slot now than they did the last time we were here in 2006 — and though there was a shopping shuttle downtown, we didn’t have a ton of time to confidently be back for that last shuttle at 2:00 PM. Instead, we decided to hang around the port. There were plenty of cafes, bars and shops to entertain us for an hour or two and we even convinced Mom to come out and meet us ashore!

We skipped Señor Frogs — the memories we’ve made at Señor Frogs locations across the Caribbean and Mexico while we were in college are enough to last a lifetime (or, at least, the photos of the memories. Some of them are very fuzzy…) — but we popped into a bunch of souvenir shops, convenience stores (I love Mexican snacks and candies!) and pharmacies (Stephanie wanted to stock up on some antibiotics and skin creams). I slipped right back into bartering and I think I’ve lost my touch a little because the shop keepers were all accepting my first counter offers to their first offers, but it was fun just being back in the habit.

There was an Artisan Market right at the pier. Rule of thumb is the further back you go into a market, the better the prices are. We found that to be true. We purchased some woven tote bags, sweatshirts, embroideries — we were clearly overcompensating for not being able to shop in Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlán.

We didn’t want to deal with the lines we were sure would form closer to back onboard time, so we headed back around 1:00, quickly making our way through a short line onto the next available tender and back on our wonderfully air conditioned ship.

Aside from the Diet Cokes, we hadn’t eaten since nearly 7:00 AM, so we promptly made our way upstairs for some burgers from Guy’s. I do a custom order at Guy’s (plain ungrilled bun because they grill the buns with mayo and I don’t mess with mayo) and they easily accommodated.

After lunch, Mom and Stephanie went back to our cabins and I went upstairs to watch sailaway. Cabo has such a distinctive and beautiful shoreline and anchoring offshore meant we got a beautiful view as we sailed out through the Sea of Cortez into the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

As soon as we were out to sea, it was nearly time for the Diamond and Platinum Reunion. Mom skipped and Stephanie and I were both meh on going because we had a Cheers! package so the free drinks thing wasn’t much of a compelling offer, but that VIFP video slaps and we literally went because I wanted to clap for the ships I’ve been on. I just love that video!

We had (very) late dinner reservations, so after the party, we had a long, restful nap and when we woke up, the formal night festivities were underway and it was already dark outside. We showered, glammed up, took a few shots at the Havana Bar and then headed out to the steakhouse for dinner.

What else can I stay about Carnival’s steakhouse that I haven’t already said? I feel like I floated through the entire meal, right back to bed afterwards because it was so rich and heavy and delicious that there was no where left to land. The only course that disappointed a bit was dessert — Mom and Stephanie wanted cheesecake, which meant a no go on the Art for the Table (which everyone has to order). I got the chocolate sphere and parts of it were sinfully decadent and other bites had no flavor at all.

I don’t know if it was the nap or the wine or the meal — likely some combination of the three — but I could not keep my eyes open after dinner. Stephanie and I kept planning on going to the Piano Bar, or maybe having another nightcap at the Alchemy Bar, where we kept discovering new favorites every night. But instead, we stopped at Java Blue to pick up some Vitacocos and slid back to the room to wash off our makeup, put on our jammies and curl up in our beds with some Food Network and leave all of the rest of the fun stuff for the next day.