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Casa de los Gatos – Featured Home

nanci — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:00:08 +0000

Casa de los Gatos is a spectacular 3900 square foot luxury home located in the exclusive and private Pedregal Development. Located high on the pacific side of the development, this home offers you one of the most breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean and beautiful sunsets. This luxury 4 bedroom, 5 bath home, is beautifully decorated and appointed throughout for your enjoyment and welcomes you with all of its special features.

Casa de los Gatos is artistically conceived to maximize outdoor space, private living areas and spectacular ocean views. We want you to relax and enjoy your favorite beverage or quiet time with a book around the infinity swimming pool/spa or on the large terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Casa de los Gatos is located just minutes from downtown Cabo, the marina, restaurants and night life, where you will have everything at your fingertips for a vacation that you will always remember!!! Come and visit Casa de los Gatos as it welcomes you to our “Paradise” in Cabo San Lucas.

Sleeping Accommodations:
4 King Beds

Maid Service – Monday – Saturday

Refundable Security Deposit - $1,000.00

Wines of Baja California

nanci — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:14:15 +0000

When we drive the Baja Peninsula from Phoenix to Cabo San Lucas we prefer to cross the border at the beautiful town of Tecate. This road takes us through some of the wine country of Baja California. On one trip we stopped at the L.A. Cetto Winery for a short tour and some tasting.

Until about 10 years ago you rarely found a Mexican wine on wine lists anywhere. Today, Mexican wines and particularly Baja Wines are popular and sought after by some of the world’s most refined wine lovers. About 90% of all Mexican wine grapes are grown in Baja California. The wine producing areas include San Antonio de las Minas, San Vicente Valley, and Santo Tomas Valley. We stayed in Santo Tomas several times on our treks to Cabo San Lucas when crossing late at the TJ border. There is a motel and restaurant right on the main highway. The small motel is clean and the restaurant has great food, full bar and small gift shop.

Wine experts say that the hallmark of the Baja’s complex, interesting vintages, is a salty, mineral taste. This is a result of the cooling Pacific breezes and mists as well as the salt deposits peppering the ground throughout the area.

Mexican wine making history goes back the very first arrival of Herman Cortes in 1519. However, the information really begins in 1597, when Hacienda del San Lorenzo was founded. Even though this was not the first winery in the Western Hemisphere, this winery was the pioneer to commercial wine making in Mexico. It is located in the northeastern state of Coahuila.

The first winery in Baja, Bodegas Santo Tomas, was established in 1888 on the vineyard of the former Dominican Santo Tomas Mission. In the mid 1990’s we saw what is known as a renaissance of quality in the Baja wines. Winemakers started planting internationally known grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon along with the traditional, local grape varietals such as the Mission grape turning their efforts to quality rather than quantity.

Currently, at least 25 vineyards are operating in Baja. The four largest are Domecq, L.A. Cetto, Bodegas’ Santo Tomas and Monte Xanic. Several boutique wineries are currently producing small quantity, high value wines. Those boutique wineries include Adobe Guadalupe, Casa de Piedra and Chateau Camou.

Many of the local restaurants in Los Cabos are now offering Mexican wines on their wine lists helping to build a national wine tradition and identity. If you want to take some home, Baja vintages can be found at La Europea, Tutto Bene

Cabo San Lucas’ Sea of Cortez

nanci — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:10:56 +0000

This beautiful body of water is known as the world’s youngest sea. The Baja Peninsula is the world’s third longest peninsula with over 2000 miles of coastline. The cool waters of the Pacific Ocean are found off the west coast and the much warmer Sea of Cortez is on the east. The Sea of Cortez is a thousand-mile ocean trench between the Baja on the west and the Sierra de la Madre Mountains of mainland Mexico on the east.

It is recorded that about 4-6 million years ago, a segment of the East Pacific Rise split, separating Baja from mainland Mexico shifting the Baja and much of southern California in a northwesterly direction. Organisms flourished in the sea created and the Sea of Cortez is now home to at least 3,000 species of marine creatures. It is known to have the richest abundance of sea life of anywhere on the planet.

The Sea of Cortez was discovered by Spaniard Francisco Ulloa in 1540. He named it for Hernan Cortes and although its official name is the Gulf of California, it’s widely known as the Sea of Cortes, the original name given.

The Colorado River empties into the northern end of the Sea of Cortes. At this point the area is flat and shallow with tides that vary by almost a mile between highs and lows and a heavily silted bottom.

The lower portion of the Sea of Cortes is a deep trough between the continental blocks that comprise the American continent and the Pacific shelf. The initial drop is about 2500 feet but just south of Cabo the depth increases to about 4,000 feet. The waters are warm ranging from 65 degrees in the winter to 88 degrees in the summer.

Most of the shoreline of the Baja is inaccessible by road and largely uninhabited. There are rugged islands surrounded by pristine bays that dot the Sea of Cortez. Jacques Cousteau, how explored the region, referred to the sea as the “world’s aquarium.” The Sea is renowned for its sport fishing, diving, snorkeling, boating and windsurfing. The amazing bounty includes shrimp, yellow fin tuna, dorado, red snapper, squid, black and striped marlin, sailfish and a huge variety of tropical reef fish.

Catch and release has become more common than not and the Mexican government has made efforts to prevent this rich sea from being fished dry. Cabo Pulmo, located on the East Cape has been designated as an underwater national park. Divers and snorkelers are welcome but no one may fish in this area.

A variety of water activities are offered in Cabo and there are several weeklong adventure and wildlife cruises that depart from Cabo, going as far north as Loreto. Whether you enjoy the Sea of Cortez in Los Cabos or take a longer cruise, this body of water is worth the adventure.

****Photo: Punta Chivato near Mulege on the Sea of Cortez

Tips at the Gas Pumps

nanci — Sat, 21 May 2011 19:09:04 +0000

A friend of mine sent this to me and I thought I would share it. With gas prices so high these tips could come in handy!

TIPS ON PUMPING GAS
I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are paying up to $3.75 to $4.10 per gallon. My line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon:

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline.. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.
Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOTfill up; most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

Cabo San Lucas Local Newspaper

nanci — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:54:15 +0000

We always enjoy reading the Gringo Gazette, one of Cabo’s local English newspapers. The owner/editor Carrie Duncan is always creative as are the other contributing writers. Next time you are in Cabo pick up a copy or go online. Here’s the link: http://www.gringogazette.tv/

In a recent issue, March 28, I found the following article and thought it would be fun to share.

Who Reads What?
And is anybody reading the Gringo Gazette?

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the U.S.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the U.S.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the U.S. and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the U.S. but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the U.S., if they could find the time–and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the U.S. and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who is running the U.S. as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure if there is a United States or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped, minority, feminist, atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens form any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

12. The Gringo Gazette is read by people in Mexico who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.