Baja California South, Mexico

During my school break Charlie and I decided to take a week and explore Southern Baja, specifically Los Cabos (San Jose del Cabo) and Cabo San Lucas.  It was only a 2 hour plane ride to the most southern tip and fairly inexpensive. We inadvertently split up our stay between the two mentioned locations not really realizing they were two different cities but it really worked out to our benefit.  Los Cabos was a pretty small beach town, with not much else besides beer, food and waves!  Charlie did purposely pick our first place on Airbnb because it was was a two minute drive, down a hill to a surf spot called Zipper's where they hold a lot of contests.  It did not disappoint.  We didn't time it like this but were  there was a South swell and it was just perfect and consistent.  Charlie was in heaven, surfing 5 hours a day!  Unfortunately because it such a local spot I didn't bring my camera out here because it is rather secret and we didn't want to tick off any of the locals.  Another spot we ventured to that Charlie had read about in  lot of surf blogs was called Shipwrecks.  It was about a 40 minute drive on a dirt road that just opens up between two cliffs and all the sudden your at this secluded epic break which only happened to consist of people from Encinitas and Trestles but the crowd never exceeded 12 people.

On the drive to Shipwrecks it was wave after wave

This is a good view of what we were seeing on the journey.  Long stretches of dirt road along the coast.  There was a few "communities" with scattered homes, mostly they were uninhabited.

 I also wanted to include a video of the drive just to give you a better feel for it..

Driving Baja

                        A few times I questioned Charlie about if we were going the right way..

                                                       Stopped to watch the set come in

You can get a sense of how far the "road" stretched in this one. 

About the only person we saw on the drive, a scarecrow. 

Charlie had a perma smile the whole time we were in Cabo.  He caught so many waves!  Again I didn't take many pictures at the actual break..Sorry Dad!

We saw many burros, perros y vaccas on this trip.  Someone came to the beach with their dogs and the dog ran right after these guys. 

I don't think the dog was going to do anything but he was scaring the donkeys. 

Later the dog chased a herd of goats too. 

Probably the only wave I caught on camera and Shipwrecks. 

La playa. 

We were seeing a lot of animals on this road, herds of cows, lots of donkeys and goats.  

This guy was slowly walking up to our car and we decided to stop and feed him..

Well all we had was a bell pepper but because it was 99 degrees and had been in our cooler he gladly ate it!

Below is a link for the video of us feeding him! Because it was on google drive i couldn't get it to load to youtube so settled for this..Please ignore my incessant laughing.

Donkey Feeding!

After 3 days in San Jose del Cabo we were off to Cabo San Lucas.  We got a privately owned condo right on the Marina.

We had a beautiful view and were right in the heart of town with tons of restaurants, bars and shops.  We spent a lot of time exploring different places around town and surprisingly met a lot of Americans that had relocated there.  And you guessed it, brewing ideas in Charlie's head!

Cabo is really well known for these Arches.  I think they are pretty recognizable, movies magazine advertisements.  It was pretty majestic at times (when the pirate ship booze cruise wasn't underway with blaring techno music and obnoxious strobe lights) and we did a really nice dinner one night at a hotel overlooking the ocean and the arches.  

One of the beautiful sunsets we watched from our room.

And thats all I have for pictures!  I didn't bring my camera out as much as I wanted to because it was sort of nice and I didn't want to get buzzed and neglect it somewhere.  We did have a lot of pictures on Charlie's phone but when we were leaving we had a beer at the bar and he was charging it, then suddenly they were doing final boarding and we rushed on the place leaving the phone behind.  Disappointing but I told him if thats the worst thing that happens to us on vacation its OK.  

Cabo, we will be back and tell all our friends and family about this gem!

Hiking Iron Mountain, Poway

A few weeks ago Charlie and I did a hike with our friends Kristen and Brian.  Charlie works near the hike and mentioned he always sees people parked there so its had to be something worth checking out?!

It had been hot week so we were slightly apprehensive about it because much of the hike you are exposed to full light but it turned out to be pretty dang nice!

Well there were times when it was hot and my dear friend caught me at one of my not so fine moments up against a cool rock.  It was like what dogs do, laying on cold marble floors.  I told her it was an ancient practice of the local Indians...

Charlie and I at the top!

A view from the top!

And of course a few selfies..

Fishing In San Diego

About a month ago our friends Niki and Marcus invited Charlie and I to accompany them on a day fishing trip with their friend Bob.  We of course took them up on the invitation!  We met at the harbor and embarked on our day trip.

Niki and I were nervous that the sun wouldn't come out because in the morning with the marine layer it was pretty cold but sure enough after about an hour and a few beers it was typical sunny San Diego!

In the beginning it was pretty quite as far as catching fish goes.  We tried a few different spots and decided to go where there was a nice view (can't believe i didn't take pictures) of Petco park and the Coronado bridge.  We started getting more bites over in that area too!

Charlie caught a sting ray!

Showing off his catch.  This was a pretty small one.  

This one we ended up keeping!

The day was filled with catching fish, beer, and lots of rays!  

We are ready to go again! Who's in??

Digaudio Wedding In Dominican Republic

June 12th Charlie and I traveled to the Dominican Republic to witness two of our dear friends getting married!  A few years ago when we lived in Oceanside, they came down to visit and got engaged at Sunset Cliffs.  So we find these two to be pretty spectacular people and it was really an honor to not only be invited to celebrate their wedding but for Rosalie to ask me to be in her wedding as well.

Charlie and I had never been to DR! It is a pretty popular destination for people on the Northeast because it is relatively quick and inexpensive to go.  We paid for of an adults only all inclusive (food and drink) part of the hotel.  Also something we were newbies at.

It was a bit of a treck for us, we had to do an overnight to JFK and then from their fly into Punta Cana, it was about 15 hours for us.  It was cool to go to JFK because we ended up being on the same flight with two other couples were pretty close with who happened to have rooms all next to one another.  Worked out pretty well

We made it to our hotel and man was it awesome!!!  Until we arrived Charlie and I were complaining a little about the long travel, missing work and school, the short period of time we were going for, and immediately all of that diminished when we got there, like instantly!  I have never experienced this but we were being waited on hand and foot.  I guess you get what you pay for?  Right when we got off the bus we were taken to a separate registration area where we were served cocktails in the AC (huge +) then while we were waiting for information on our rooms we were led to another area with platters of food and more champagne bottles then I could count.

Despite Anthony and Steve's face they were both as excited as Charlie..

photo credit Maggie

After we stuffed our faces for a little we were informed the rooms wouldn't be ready until the check in time.  We were offered a tour of the premises which had 4 restaurants a buffet, 6? or so bars spread out, two swim up bars, a coffee/ice cream shop, volleyball, pools, cabanas, water sports and shall i go on? We were all in awe!  None of us are use to luxury or fancy traveling but man this was it!  Needless to say since we had time to kill we went straight to the pool and swim up bar.  We got pina coladas, played some ping pong and that was the beginning of our vacation.

Eventually we made it to our divine rooms with a stocked bar, bottle of champagne, in room jacuzzi, patio, and straight up luxury.

This was the entrance of the hotel.

We were pretty excited about this junior suite..

We actually go a picture together!

Helped to walk into a bottle of champagne.

Again, our sun salutations!

The next morning we decided to give room service a try and we were pleasantly surprised.

We did lots of lounging and swimming on this trip!  It was so fun to see so many of our friends from NY, it was definitely an added bonus of the trip.  

This is where we did a lot of our pool lounging

photo by Marino

This was the beach just next to the pool photo above!

photo by Cameron

photo by Cameron

The boys did a fishing trip so all the girls decided we had to do something also besides, sleep, float and drink.  I don't have any pictures other then this but we did a banana boat which is tied behind a speed boat and you basically just try and hold on.  

The night before the wedding Drew and Rosalie threw a white party where we were all told to wear white!  This was a few hours into the party.

All the bridesmaids

Bridesmaids + Hillier

Then soon enough it was time for the big day.

Rosalie looked stunning! 

The Newlyweds

So happy we were there to celebrate with you guys!  I can't wait for the rest of the pictures

Groomsmen

Happy Couple!

 Waiting around for the ceremony to start

The girls were sweating everywhere! It was so hot, in fact my camera couldn't handle the heat and started fogging up!  So that was the end of the pictures before the ceremony actually started

Bridesmaids and Bride celebrating.  We ended the night with a lot of dancing, great food, laughter and an especially tear jerking slide show (probably because they even included Johnson in it) about their engagement and time in California.  It was really touching, thank you for that Rosalie and Drew!

Thank you again to the Digaudios for letting us be there to share such a special event!