Todd

I just returned from Cabo and wanted to pass on some information and observations that may save you money and/or time.
1) Be alert going through the airport. If someone tries to get you to the counter, after you go through customs, under the auspices of providing transportation or some other service, they are trying to get you to a timeshare presentation.
2) If you do end making the same mistake I made, don't belive everything they tell you. The vouchers they say they provide are not coupons but activities you must pre-pay at the timeshare presentation to be used at their facilities which may or may not be conveniently located close to your hotel. Also, the cost of the activities is inflated and you can get the same deal if you go the source of the activity and dicker with the vendor.
3) The taxi fare is not $75.00 round trip. A driver would have taken us to Cabo San Lucas for $55.00. The bus/van with multiple stops is much cheaper.
4) If someone on the beach, in town, or at a reataurant strikes up a conversation with you and they are not your server, they are trying to get you to a timeshare presentation or trying to sell you tickets to an activity. The activites, as I said before, are cheapest when you deal directly with the vendor.
5) The "Welcoming Staff" at your hotel also wants to get you to a timeshare presentation or sell you tickets to activities. They are not there for your convenience, but to make money selling things.

I bring these things up because I had let my guard down and it cost me some of my vacation time dealing with issues I did not want to be involved in. You can get alot of free and cheap things if you want to go to the timeshare presentations. But if time is more important to you than money when you are on vacation, skip it. Happy travels.

Anonymous

Cabo's Timeshare have got to be the worst. Two years Back a Canadian Fireman and his wife were criminally assualted one afternoon on a beach in Cabo. They had a verbal alercation with the Timeshare who left and returned much later with a friend. They had been drinking. They had another verbal aleracation with the Canadian Couple then the Timeshare picked up a rock threw at the wife and hit her on the skull causing damage. The Fireman intervened on behalf of his wife and tackled the Timeshare who then pulled a knife on the Fireman and stabbed him a number of times. In spite of this vicious assault the Fireman held the Timeshare down till the police arrived. The Canadian couple were air evacuated out to an Arizona Hospital. Make sure you carry lots of medical insurance for Air evacuation costs $15,000 and they will not do it if you do not have coverage and hospital in the States that will take you. It took a few weeks for the Fireman to recover. By the way he was a middle aged man with many years on the force.

anonymous

The poor Mexican who cannot get papers to work States I can understand his need to pursue tourists to go to a Bullshit timeshare Pitch.

It is the Americans / Canadians that go down there and work, they are the low of the lows. Lots of low lifes flee from up North and end up in Cabo. Sex, drugs and rock and roll is what Cabo is all about.

To give you an idea how low these Americans will go the local Cabo paper reported a pyramid scam being run by the Female American Closers on the local Mexican woman and proceeded to name names.

The Scam was called the Dinner Party where the Closers iniated by pooling a few thousand dollars each and as each of their names came to top they scooped the money.
The problem was they lied, manipulated many Mexican women into putting their life savings of two to four thousand dollars into this scam and the result of course is that the local Mexican Women lost.

The paper investigated and discovered the reason the Mexican women were such easy targets for this scam is that in Mexico poored Mexican pool a portion of their pay check for the purchase of big items but there due to the social pressures their name goes back to the bottom once they have collected and they keep paying into the pot.

Where this got really hairy was once they had drained the local women these American STINKY TWATS were going to work over the Mexican Strippers and take them. I guess the American Gringa low life had the Stripper figured as use to Abuse.

Anyway the scam became public.

People beware they have white skin and speak English but if you think they are like you forget it. In my opinion it is as low can you go when you are sitting in a Mexican resort flogging a timeshare on a tourist versus being back in the States doing a regular job.

In Cabo Trust No One.

Life in Cabo Sucks

The Average wage in Mexico is $5 a day. We as tourists pay $100/$200 for a room for one night, on average $30 dollars per person for one dinner, and $5/$10 for cocktails.
These prices are equivalent to what we pay in the States for accomadation and meals and in many cases Mexico's Resort prices can be more expensive than back home.
So where does our money go?

In the States the minimum wage is $5.15 per hour not $5 a day.

Life in Cabo Sucks Part Two

For the majority of people who live and work there Cabo is quite a different experience from what the tourist gets to see.
The Houston Chronicle:

Nov. 30, 2002, 11:05PM

Locals labor amid luxuries well beyond their reach
By JENALIA MORENO
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau
CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico -- Every day, Marisol Quintero walks between the two worlds of Cabo San Lucas.

She spends her days on the beach trying to lure tourists considering buying luxurious time shares in this sun-soaked paradise. These condominiums are so out of her reach that Quintero doesn't even fantasize about spending one night in their oversized beds, with their 380-thread-count sheets.

Late at night, she returns home to her two-room shack, where she can see countless stars through the gaps in her sheet metal roof. The sky isn't dimmed by the glare of lights in this shantytown, where there's no electricity.

By morning, she's out again trying to steer rich visitors toward buying vacation homes on the beach or renting water scooters.

"Where are you from, amigo?" she asks nearly every American who strolls past her on this beach in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.

To tourists, the herds of vendors such as Quintero on the beach seem a nuisance. Most walk past without ever giving her a second look. She's just another face in this sea of poor trying to keep afloat in one of Mexico's most opulent resorts.

At night, Quintero invites tourists to dine on jumbo shrimp at a restaurant on this town's boogie-all-night drag.

"We have to have two jobs here to live," Quintero, 31, explains.

Working two jobs, six days a week, Quintero earns $350 a week, the same amount tourists might spend on a short vacation in Los Cabos -- the common name for Cabo San Lucas and its neighboring town of San Jose del Cabo.

life In Cabo part 3

For tourists, this is a nightlife mecca. For locals, Los Cabos seem close enough to paradise, with a natural beauty and constant influx of American dollars.

Take a short drive north of the beach, the yacht-filled marina, the five-star hotels and restaurants like Hard Rock Café and Squid Roe, and you stumble into reality in the form of pot-holed dirt roads, shantytowns and yards filled with burros and chickens.

At night, buses are dropping off maids and waiters wearing starched uniforms after work. Quintero lives in an area like this, where 5,000 people subsist.

"I see people who have a lot, and I don't; and it makes me want to cry," said Quintero after she arrived at the 900-square-foot parcel of property she calls home.

Quintero bought this land for $1,000 a year ago and hopes to save enough money to paint her plywood walls and build a real floor where there's now only dirt.

Economists also see the stark differences in living conditions.

"We're a study in contrasts," said Margarita Gracia, director of the University of Baja California Sur's Los Cabos campus. "We're the most expensive tourist destination; we have extreme poverty."

The trouble for the many people lies in the cost of surviving amidst such splendor.

While tourists take bubble baths in hotel rooms costing $150 or more a night and dance in clubs pulsating with loud music and bright lights, Gracia said many workers in Los Cabos don't have basic services like water and electricity.

The local government made promises to deliver such services during the last election, but residents are still patiently waiting.

Those people who do have electricity complain the prices are too high. Living in Los Cabos costs 45 percent more than living in the country's capital of Mexico City, another expensive city, Gracia calculates.

And earning the government's minimum wage of about $4.22 a day doesn't cover living expenses, so most workers have to survive on tips.

But they still have to pay the same high prices tourists do: $1.90 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke, $7 for quesadillas at a hotel restaurant and $3.80 for a 1-gallon bottle of water.

Life In Cabo Part 4

Houston Chronicle cont'd

Life In Cabo Part 4

Houston Chronicle Cont'd

It's a problem the developers of the posh houses going up here are aware of. Doug Schnitzer, a Houston developer who is selling multimillion-dollar homes along the beach, said his management company has donated money to fix a local ambulance, helped on local cleanup campaigns and donated funds to repair a local school.

"It's important to everybody to step forward to make the Los Cabos area something we want to be proud of," said Schnitzer, who said developers in Los Cabos need to be involved. "If we all don't care, long term that will have a detrimental impact on everybody involved."

Not too long ago, Cabo San Lucas was an affordable and sleepy fishing town. Here at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, the Sea of Cortez spills into the Pacific Ocean, and for decades it attracted divers and fishermen drawn to this once-isolated town that was only accessible by sea.

Back then, fisherman gave their excess catch to locals, recalled Carmen Gonzalez, who like many Mexican residents of this area moved here in search of a better life. She arrived in 1975 from Mexico City and spent many years working as a waitress in a bar before she married and had children.

Everything changed when the Mexican government stepped in about 20 years ago and began to develop this town at Land's End.

Real estate developers descended and built resort hotels and golf courses.

Now homes go for millions. Cabo attracted the rich and famous from former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar, who opened a bar, to Enron's elite, who used to jet here for the weekend.

Now there's an international airport and a paved highway.

Such international fame has created jobs. Few people beg on the streets of Cabo San Lucas compared with other Mexican towns.

But it has also created steep prices for everyone.

Up to 10,000 Americans and other foreigners are retired or work here, and they, too, complain about the prices.

"It costs me $100 to fill up my Hummer," said an American real estate agent in San Jose del Cabo.

While tourists and foreigners gripe about their margarita bills, more than 100,000 locals struggle to pay the price of potable water delivered to their homes by a truck twice a week.

"The beer is cheaper than water here," said Quintero, who earned a degree in accounting but never found a job that paid more than the tourist industry.

Locals can't even afford the seafood in this fishing town.

Gonzalez, 50, said it's been a long time since she ate a piece of fish.

"We can't have the luxury of eating shrimp, because shrimp is very expensive," said Gonzalez, a leader of her community in San Jose del Cabo.

Hotel workers have tried to organize and demand higher wages, but many people are afraid of losing their jobs, she said.

Gonzalez and Quintero blame the Mexican government for allowing poor people to live in these primitive conditions while rich tourists enjoy five-star vacations here. Local government officials did not respond to media queries.

With the government so cash-strapped, the only alternative to helping the poor get basic utilities is to force hotels and other investors to provide decent living conditions for their workers, Gracia said.

Until then, Quintero and her neighbors use candles to see what they are cooking or make their way to the hole in the ground that serves as a toilet.

Quintero pointed out a lighted shop on the way to her home.

"The only place with lights is the place that sells beer," she said.