June 2023

Our Trip to Los Angeles

Living in one of Mexico’s most popular vacation destinations is amazing, but what about when you need a getaway from your own vacation destination?  Where do you go?

Lorne and I have discussed possible vacation options multiple times and each time we arrive back at the same conclusion that living here we totally feel like we are already on vacation, and this vacation has been going on for nearly three years already!

December 2021 was the first time since moving here that we ventured out for a little getaway.  We hadn’t actually planned to go anywhere, but due to additional COVID-19 restrictions put into place at the time by the Canadian Government, we needed to head to the US to obtain an accepted vaccination in case we needed to go back to Canada for any reason.  We chose to do this in Las Vegas, as we knew we could enjoy some amazing food and get some shopping done too.  (You can read about that whole adventure in our blog post: “And Just Like That…”)

This past April, we once again started pondering if we should plan a vacation for this year.   Lorne’s work will be holding their annual employee get-together in Ann Arbor in early August and at first we thought I should simply tag along, have him add some vacation days to the trip, and we would enjoy some shopping and sightseeing.  This idea soon became complicated as summer is high season for travel so airfares are super expensive and with the exchange rate between CAD and USD not being great for Canadians the cost for this was just a little too hard to swallow for only a few days in Ann Arbor.

After more thought, we realized we could get more bang for our vacation buck if we went someplace closer, like Los Angeles.  LA is only a two-ish hour flight from here which naturally makes the airfare much more affordable.  After adding everything up, the LA trip would end up costing us much less than what it would have been for me to tag along to Ann Arbor, so we booked the trip to LA for the last week of May.  We have been to LA quite a few times over the years, so our plans were mostly to shop and to eat some of that fun American food we haven’t had for quite a while.

The Flight

On Sunday May 28 we headed out around 9am to drop our car at the San Jose Park & Fly and took their shuttle to the airport.  Check-in went smoothly and we waited for boarding to begin for our noon flight.  Once on board, we met a lovely lady (Chely, I believe her name was) sitting next to Lorne.  She asked if we were heading home to LA, and Lorne told her most likely we were the only ones on the flight that are going on vacation, not returning home from vacation.  She was quite surprised to hear that we live full time in Cabo.  She herself is Mexican (born in Mexico City) but she now lives full time in the greater LA area.  We laughed at the fact that she is Mexican living in the US, and we are Canadian living in Mexico.  This was her first time visiting Cabo, and she was vacationing with her sister who flew in from Mexico City to meet her.  We chatted all the way to Los Angeles and thoroughly enjoyed our little visit with her.  We landed just after 2pm and, after passing though immigration/customs, we grabbed our luggage, picked up our rental car and headed off to check into our hotel. 

The Hotel

We booked our stay at the Homewood Suites in Anaheim.  We chose Anaheim as we were very familiar with the area from all the Disney trips we have taken over the years.  The room was quite large with a king bed, a small living room, and a fully equipped kitchen including a full-sized refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, and twin burner stove.  This made it quite handy to enjoy some in-room breakfast beverages before heading out for the day, or snacks in the evening while watching some TV. 

This is a rather large hotel, and we were very happy our room was near the back of the hotel, only an elevator ride away from the parking lot.  The only downside we found was having to schedule housekeeping a day ahead in order to have our room cleaned.  We kept forgetting to do so, so we ended up just picking up after ourselves, like we do at home anyways.

The Food

One of our favourite things to do while visiting the US is to enjoy lots of the fun food that we don’t usually have access to where we live, be it either Canada or Mexico.  We kept it simple (no fancy 5-star restaurants), enjoyed some of our usual places, and tried a few “new to us” places.

Below is a video highlighting all that we enjoyed…

Besides being quite surprised at how much more expensive eating out in the US is now, we did enjoy most of the meals we had, although a couple of our usual places are beginning to lose their appeal.  Also, this was our first trip post-COVID, and everywhere we went it seemed like COVID never happened and it was disappointing to find many places were back to being sticky and dirty.

The Shopping

From the moment we booked this getaway, we started making a list of all the things we needed to buy, which were things we cannot find here in Los Cabos, and are not available from Amazon Mexico.  Our list was not actually long, but rather quite specific.  The list included things like Fritos Chili Cheese chips (for Lorne), barley malt syrup (for Lorne’s homemade bagels), Tazo Zen tea (for me), Advil Allergy Sinus (for both of us) a Waterpik water flosser (to stop tooth infections), and of course, some shoes and clothing for both of us.  

Some of the items on our shopping list were easy enough to find, but others were harder to come across, like the barley malt syrup and the Waterpik model we wanted.  We saw these things listed on Kroger and Walgreen’s websites, but they were not available in the store itself.  We were told the only way to get it was to order it from their online store.  The problem however when we tried that, was when entering our credit card info to complete the purchase it requires the credit card to have a US billing address, which of course we do not have. 

We ended up ordering the Waterpik from Amazon US (with hefty shipping and import fees) once we returned home, and Lorne is going to try to locate his barley malt syrup when he goes to Ann Arbor in August.

The Traffic

We had always been slightly intimidated driving in Los Angeles (me, often ending up in tears), but after living in Mexico, driving in Los Angeles now seems like a piece of cake! 

In the song “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” Dionne Warwick sings “LA is a great big freeway…” and that pretty much says it all as, within Los Angeles County alone, there are approximately 650 miles of freeway to drive on.  An interesting fact – all freeways are highways, but not all highways are freeways.

After picking up our rental car, we took a few minutes to plan out the route we wanted to take to get to our hotel.  I asked Lorne if he was planning on driving the I-5, and he said there was no point going that far north to take the I-5 into Anaheim, which I was happy to hear as it’s such a busy freeway and often freaks me out.  Instead, our plan was to take the 405 down to the 22, take that through to Garden Grove then Harbor Blvd up into Anaheim.  Easy peasy!    

Leaving the rental car location, we saw the signs for the 405 and followed them to enter the freeway.  Then somehow (either we missed the sign or couldn’t get to the exit lane fast enough) we ended up changing over from the 405 to the 110, which took us to the 91, and lo and behold, ended up on the I-5 for the last stretch into Anaheim.  Mess up one exit and you are lucky if you end up getting where you need to go! 

For the most part during our time there, we stayed off the freeways while driving to the places we needed to go as, most of the time, the freeways were bumper to bumper with all the traffic at a standstill. 

The Weather

From previous visits to Los Angeles, we knew that the weather in May should be nice, and the temperatures pleasant.  What we didn’t expect was that we would be freezing while we were there!

The daytime highs during that week in Los Angeles were 20C/68F and the overnight lows were 16C/60F.  This was so much cooler than Cabo has been, where the daytime highs were 31C/88F and the overnight lows 23C/73F.  We spent most of the days wearing long pants, jackets and having the heat on in the car!

And as well, everyday was cloudy and grey (as in the photo above).  This was pretty much what the sky looked like every day that we were there.

As Lorne said, “well, we didn’t come for the weather or the view – and we ended up with neither”… LOL!

The Departure

On Friday June 2, we packed up, checked out of our hotel, and started to make our way to LAX.  Since we had plenty of time before our 4:30pm flight, we decided to take the off-freeway routes and drive the long way through all the little neighbourhood’s.  We find we can see a lot of interesting things when we do this.

After returning the rental car, we took the shuttle to the airport and were directed to check in at one of the kiosks (being an international flight, the app was not letting us check in online).  We ended up with the screen just spinning with nothing happening – probably because we answered “Canadian” to the question “What is your citizenship?” and “Mexico” to the question “Where is your residency?” most likely confusing it!  The attendant then directed us to stand in the long line with all the other people having problems checking in at the kiosk. 

Finally checked in, we managed to get through TSA security fairly quickly and found our gate.  Lorne asked the gate agents if there were any first class upgrades available and we were excited to find the answer was yes, so we paid the upgrade fee and settled in to wait for our flight home.

Our flight left on time, and we enjoyed the first-class experience with cocktails and dinner being served.  We landed just after 6:30pm, cleared immigration quickly (so nice having our residency cards so we don’t have to stand in the very long tourist line), waited for our luggage, cleared customs and went up to the departure level to wait for the Park & Fly shuttle to pick us up.  We were back in our car and driving home by 7:15pm. 

The Epilogue

Our little getaway to Los Angeles was exactly what we needed, giving us the opportunity to reconnect and also decompress from all our day-to-day stuff.  The best part was having the time to take our time.  We had time to simply wander through a store or drive for hours…. There was no schedule we had to keep to.  We simply lived in the moment, and it was great!

We are starting to see a trend for what vacationing will be like for us for the next while.  At this point, we are not feeling the need to spend a couple of weeks in Hawaii or take a Caribbean cruise.  Being able to spend a few days shopping and eating with no schedule to follow, in an easy-to-get-to place is more than enough to fill my heart with joy.

(For now! 😊)

Overview

Our temperatures here in Cabo continue to climb, and June brought us three separate heat waves. 

Los Cabos is located where the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific Ocean at the tip of the Baja Peninsula and experiences a mountain-desert-ocean environment that is unique to the western hemisphere.  For the most part, the weather here is mostly dry, and when it gets too hot the sweat simply evaporates off our body, like we have experienced when visiting Las Vegas during the summer.  However, being so close to the ocean, Cabo occasionally experiences massive amounts of humidity.  During this time, the sweat will literally pour off our bodies, leaving puddles behind us as we walk.  Humidity can also increase the “feels like” temperatures, often by 10 degrees.  So, with our second heat wave temps of 36C/97F and excessive humidity, our “feels like” temps were more like 46C/115F.  And funny enough, this made the third heat wave of 37C/99F feel so much cooler as the humidity was not excessive that week.

And now, here’s what’s been happening around here in June…

Currency Fluctuations

Based on a recent study regarding the cost of living in 42 cities across Mexico, Los Cabos came in first place, being the most expensive, followed by Cancun, Monterrey, and Mexico City.

The main reason things are more expensive in Southern Baja is because of the location – Los Cabos is at the tip of a very long peninsula, basically isolated from the rest of the country.  This means getting goods to Los Cabos is more expensive than getting them to other parts of Mexico, as everything needs to be either trucked in from Northern Baja, shipped from mainland Mexico or flown in, which increases the prices on everything.

Besides the cost to get goods here, as well as the general price increases everyone is currently experiencing everywhere, the expats in Mexico are also dealing with a financial problem unique to them, which is due to the peso growing in strength against the Canadian and US Dollar.

For most of June, the peso continued to climb in value, which for the most part is great for Mexico, but for expats, it adds to the price of our already increased cost of goods.  When we arrived here in Sep 2020, one Canadian Dollar was worth $16.74 pesos, and one US Dollar was worth $22.37 pesos.  Today, our Canadian “Loonie” will only buy us $12.86 pesos, and the US dollar will only buy $17.08 pesos. We now get way less pesos for our dollars.

To put it into real numbers, when we arrived here in 2020 we spent $2,000 pesos at Costco, which converted to $120CAD ($90USD).  If we were to purchase $2,000 pesos worth of groceries today, it would convert to $150CAD ($120USD).  This does not even take into consideration the fact that the original $2,000 pesos of groceries would now cost closer to $2,500 pesos (due to inflation), so we get hit with both the increased cost of goods, plus a stronger peso right now….  Lucky us!!

This means, for the exact same groceries we bought in 2020 for $120CAD ($90USD) purchased today now will cost $190CAD ($150USD).  We are now paying an extra $70CAD ($60USD) for the exact same items we bought three years ago.

Groceries are one thing, but the strong peso is also hitting expats hard for the more expensive but necessary things – like rent.  For those expats paying rent, a monthly rent of $25,000 pesos, would have been $1,500CAD ($1,200USD) in 2020, but today you would need to pay almost $2,000CAD ($1,500USD).  This doesn’t even take into consideration the annual rental increases the landlords apply, which means expats could now be paying around $800CAD ($500USD) more each month in rent for the same place.

So, what can we do about it?  Well, really there isn’t much we can do.  Like everyone else in the world who is facing the higher cost of things now, we just need to tighten our belts and be more mindful of what we buy. 

We still have our amazing view to enjoy, but now we enjoy it with a bottle of wine that costs $10CAD more than it used to!

Airport Shutdown

The Los Cabos International Airport (SJD) faced a major disruption on June 23, as all inbound and outbound flights were suspended for a few hours.

The cause behind this disruption was a giant pothole that formed right in the middle of the runway.

While maintenance crews worked on fixing the pothole, the airport issued a statement alerting the public to the problem:

“We inform that, due to damage to the runway, there will be a temporary closure of the Los Cabos Airport for an approximate time of 2 hours. We appreciate your patience, as your safety will always be our priority. We suggest constant communication with the airline”.

Passengers with scheduled flights during this time were surprised to find lengthy delays for outbound flights, and inbound passengers found themselves even more surprised to be arriving in Puerto Vallarta, La Paz, or even being re-routed back to LAX.

Within two hours the runway was restored to its original state and the airport was fully functional again.

ps…  Don’t forget to check out the latest Snippets!