Four for Forty – Second Celebration: Mexico!

I don’t remember ever having a getaway with my sister out of the country, just us. She was nervous about Mexico until we got to the other side of the border. That was after I had accidentally taken us to the wrong crossing first. Whoopsie. It was pretty easy from there, though. UBER works, and is way cheaper than taxis, so I paid for those and she paid for pretty much everything else.
The best part of the whole trip was watching her childlike enthusiasm as she realized how much Mexico really was down the street from us and that a little more of my kind of lifestyle could be hers. Getting to Las Rocas Resort and Spa an hour later, we were both ecstatic about the place. Well, minus the gigantic statue of Jesus that stood on a hill behind us with his arms extended. That creeped me out. What thrilled us even further, though, was our balcony view that was all ocean. Something that was easily seen by the picture of Big Red jumping on her bed within our first few minutes of getting there.
Quickly after settling in, we went to walk the grounds for an initial checkout and, both being tired from always living on the go, to veg at the infinity pool. Amazing and relaxing minus the group of guys who had no other chicks to check out but us. Later walking by two of them on their second floor balcony, one yelled down to come up and party with them. When I asked what he meant by party he responded by telling us to come up to see. Big nope on that one.
Heading back up to our room, I was talking to Wendy ,who was out on the balcony, from inside the room. Walking out to meet her, she gestured to the balcony next door where it turned out that the guys from the hot tub/cat calling us were. We, wide-eyed with a giggle, tried to ignore them as they carried on a sweet conversation together about what I don’t remember but something that showed them to not be the creepers we had worried about.
An hour or so later one of the two guys unexpectedly jumped from his balcony to ours with a big smile and hello. After my quick scolding for a dangerous move, the three of us got into a conversation of which a buzzed Wendy entertained me as she chatted away while barely stopping for a breath. He did manage to join in enough to fill us in on how him and his cousin (who he had been unsuccessful in getting to come over to that point) were surfers on holiday from their family’s oil drill (or something like that). At one point Wendy cracked us all up when when walking right into the glass sliding door. Soon after we separated from him and his cousin to go our separate ways for dinner with a request to leave a note with our contact info on our door for meeting back up later. Well, she thought I was crazy to have actually done it (and even a wee bit embarrassed) as she thought it was only the comment of a friendly gesture and that it was awkward for me to really leave the number as they would never really call. Low-and-behold the priceless look of delighted surprise on her face when they actually did. Soon after we met back up at the resort and eventually made our way back down to the hot tub to hang with the other random people who were on holiday, traveling or expats. It was her first experience in this traveler world and she was floating on an excited cloud with how awesome it all was. Those kind of connections are my favorite part about travel and seeing her finally experience it just may have been the highlight of all my birthday celebrations combined. I didn’t even mind so much when her staying out until almost dawn with our neighbor meant that it would likely be an early night the next day on my actual birthday, Feb 8.
We struck out almost the entire time with the restaurants we went to, including lobster in Puerto Nuevo, but did manage to find major deliciousness at the street taco stand next to the resort where each was $1. Something excited Big Red so much that she tipped the guys working there $10 or a $6 tab.
Papas & Beer still stands as my favorite of places I’ve gone to in Baja. Going both days, we sat on the deck with buckets of beer while watching the horses for rent on both sides of us, vendors walking around and other people enjoying a couple days of relaxation and fun. On our full day, the 8th, we got full body massages of which we teased that she got the professional masseuse and me the receptionist due to their not wanting to lose the business. The shoulder massages we got on the deck of Papas & Beer the next day was much better for me but also left bruises on my arms that would take over a week to go away. That little woman was strong!
Wendy bought me a bracelet and ring for my b-day as well as some souvenirs for the girls (her daughter and our other niece). Having started the day hungover and tired, we were more than thankful that we fought to get ourselves there as our relaxing day slowly continued on. Especially when one of the guys working there found his way over to force me to do a popper. In other words a fizzy drink that’s poured into the mouth from the bottle followed by the mouth being covered to prevent spitting it out while the head is shaken around and a loud whistle blown obnoxiously. After me the guy also got Wendy and unexpectedly picked her up on his shoulders and spun her around. Followed, by which, was her signature friendly smack on the arm. It was hilarious.

Everything of the trip had been so easy until the ride back to the boarder. In true little sister fashion, Big Red passed out only to wake up asking if we were there yet before crashing back out again while I dealt with the Spanish speaking driver (who was nice and patient) as we tried to figure out what to do when the UBER app dropped my ride. Something we would find out about an hour later had happened worldwide. After a couple times pulling over, messages sent back and forth to UBER and the driver trying to figure out if we needed to pay the rest of the ride in cash, we finally got it all sorted. Finally making it to the border what must have been 45 minutes later than we would have save that trouble, others walked by us so fast through that it was obvious they were commuters walking over on a daily basis. Finally walking past the two hot boarder patrol officers as we stepped back into America no more than ten minutes later, one answered my call to Wendy with a big joking smile on his face when asking her if she had contacted our mom to pick us up by saying that she would be waiting for us. It was the perfect ending to one damn amazing celebration.