TRAVELLING IN STYLE : EXCELLENT ADVENTURES : Southern Exposure : One pale Alaskan and his family trade salmon fishing and a frozen Subaru for two weeks of sun and fun in a Cabo condo

Adventures, and the degree to which they are adventuresome, are relative to where you come from and where you’re going. Floating around in a mountain-rimmed Alaskan bay, fishing for the fabled king salmon and watching for sea otters, would probably seem adventuresome to someone from, say, Southern California. But for Alaskans, it’s just another fine way to spend a weekend.

In the same way, jumping on a plane at LAX and heading down the coast to Cabo San Lucas might be a fine distraction for an Angeleno but probably wouldn’t really count as an adventure. But what if you came from that mountain-rimmed bay in Alaska--a place whose dark winters suck not just the pigment from your skin but the very light from your soul, a place like the small town of Homer that, for all its wonders and bounty, drags its most devoted residents through the cold months and deposits them into March and April mere shadows of their former selves, seeking the light of day like potato sprouts in a root cellar?

And what if the only foreign country you had ever been to was Canada, and the only things foreign about that were the beer and the license plates?

And then suppose that you had the opportunity to spend two weeks, upon emerging from an Alaskan winter, at a private condominium village in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with your wife and 6-year-old boy. Now that might be an adventure.

As it happens, I had that very opportunity earlier this year. The following is a sampling of my daily ruminations while I enjoyed my most excellent adventure on the tip of the Baja Peninsula.

Day One: I wasn’t fully prepared for how disorienting it would be not to be able to speak the language here. I can’t understand anything that’s being said to me, and the locals can’t understand anything I’m saying back. It’s amazing how quickly communication breaks down after that.

I had a little trouble with the guy at the rental-car place, to begin with. The only words we could seem to find in common were “American Express,” “Volkswagen” and “collision insurance.” He went for the American Express, I went for the Volkswagen, but we bogged down on the insurance. I told him in perfect English that I had other coverage and wished to decline the insurance. He told me in presumably perfect Spanish that my coverage was no good in Mexico. They told me the same thing in New York once, so I started to feel a little more at home. I gave him my best stubborn-tourist stare, which looks somewhat like the expression on a glazed turnip, until he broke off his glare and shoved the forms at me to sign. Language barriers were disintegrating all over the place.

I brought the “Berlitz Spanish for Travellers,” but so far have only memorized the phrase “No comprendo,” which has served me well. Beyond that, I am rapidly becoming aware that the Spanish in my book and the Spanish spoken in Mexico are two different dogs. But they’re close enough that if I feed one, the other one might not bite me.

Our destination, the Club Cascadas de Baja, turned out to look every bit as wonderful in person as it did in the brochures, except that the women in the loungers weren’t the ones in the pictures. A resort complex designed by American architect Edward Giddings (with interiors by his wife, Patricia), it’s laid out like a village, with lots of individual thatch-roofed villas connected by flagstone sidewalks. This is not what condominiums look like where I come from.

There was a fiesta going on tonight at the Hotel Melia, up the beach a couple hundred yards, which convinced me immediately that I’m going to like this place. We walked in our bare feet through the surf to a huge spread of food I haven’t seen the likes of since my Grandma Hattie’s 90th in Illinois. We ate and drank margaritas until we could hardly see and cashed out for some incomprehensible amount of pesos.

I’ve already grasped the fact that pesos aren’t worth very much. I exchanged a hundred-dollar traveler’s check at the front desk here and got more bills back than I could carry in my shorts. Millionaires must come easy in this part of the world.

We’re going to sleep early, still tired from the trip, feeling like a million pesos--at least.

Day Three: We’ve spent the last couple days getting acclimated. Our son Courtney’s 6-year-old Alaskan skin is so transparent that you can see his vascular system at work in the bright sun. We’re using a sun block No. 30-something for the time being, which appears to have the protective qualities of a leather trench coat. Debi and I have been careful, but we already have healthy burns anyway. The exposure is working. I’m already growing accustomed to seeing my own bare legs and feet and have forgiven them their shortcomings. After living in lots of clothes for so long, it requires a great leap of faith and trust in human kindness to wear virtually nothing right out in front of everybody.

We haven’t ventured into town yet. Just hanging around getting the lay of the land. You lie around long enough and Pedro comes out from the club and brings you a pina colada.

The roving beach vendors, on the other hand, have quickly gone from colorful to burdensome. A person can buy anything from handmade Guatemalan ponchos to para-sailing plastic Ninja Turtles. Should one have a use for either, they’re probably a bargain. There is one old man selling masks who hollers, “ Hola! Amigo! Halloween! Hallo weeeeen ! Mascara! Mascara!”-- interminably. He is by far the most obnoxious salesperson on the beach and would probably do well as a carny back in the States.

Using my Berlitz I had a nice conversation with Marthe, the housekeeper, this morning. We talked a lot about her children, or it could have been her sore hip. I was a little fuzzy about it by the time she left, but we were both smiling. Tomorrow I’m going to find something to do.

Day Five: Yesterday we rented kayaks and took a little trip out to the point and back. We got to the Playa de Amor, the Beach of Love, early in the morning before the tourists--well, before the other tourists. It is where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortes, and the raw might of the two crashing together is thrilling--both beautiful and powerful. The famous Cabo arch stands near a flat rock covered with sea lions. They bark like dogs but seem much too lazy to be threatening. The sea lions back home can be aggressive, but these must be on vacation like us.

I went back to the point this morning by myself. I wanted to paddle the kayak inside the arch to see what it would feel like to pulse up and down on two seas at once. It looked pretty scary, so I learned how to holler “Help!” in Spanish from Berlitz in case something went wrong. It would be just my luck to be caught thrashing around in the surf with a shark eating off my legs and me yelling the Spanish equivalent of “Hi, how are you?” to a passing tour boat.

As it turned out, I didn’t need help, because when I got there I chickened out. The water was a little rougher than yesterday, and I didn’t want to risk it. But I told everybody I had done it when I got back anyway.

We had dinner in town at Squid Roe, a loud and throbbing local club and tourist trap. The food was Mexican and apparently genuine, and the staff was entertaining--but it was one of those places you only need to see once. It is designed primarily, I think, to encourage vacationing college students to drink too much tequila and throw up.

Day Seven: We’re getting dark in color now and starting to feel less foreign. It is making us adventuresome. I went para-sailing today, which was really a lot of fun, but scared me more than I admitted to my wife and son. I’m being punished for lying about the kayak trip. I’m sure of it. Being hoisted like a box kite into the clear blue sky while the only two people in the world who really depend on me looked on was a sobering moment. The view from the kite was incredible, but I was thinking mostly about my insurance coverage.

We’re finally starting to find the places the local people eat at. They’re all about a block off the main drag. While the atmosphere of these places is reminiscent of a bombed-out Arby’s, the food is great and the people are very friendly and seem glad to see us. (We don’t worry about drinking the water here, as Cabo is supplied by an artesian well, and water quality is good. I did get mildly sick after a couple of our meals at local places, but then I’ve had the same feeling after eating at several McDonald’s.)

My Spanish is getting better. I can say the little bit I know well enough now that people think I know more. I don’t.

Day Nine: It always amazes me that people can actually grow hair on their knees if they wear shorts long enough. We’re looking good now. Even the tops of our feet are getting tan.

We’ve spent the last couple days just lounging around the Club Cascadas. This is really a nice place. We’re getting some friendly pressure to buy into one of these time shares, and I have to admit I’m tempted. I mean, any place that has two pools, a tennis court, a decent restaurant, a private beach and a guy who brings you pina coladas at the drop of a hat does have a certain appeal to a guy who lives closer to Siberia than he does to Disneyland. We’ll see.

Day Eleven: We drove the car out into the desert today just to look around. Such a different part of the world than ours. The cactuses--all those tall, green spiny trees are magnificent. We saw a lot of goats and burros, dead and alive, along the road. I wonder if they’re wild or just someone’s errant livestock.

We also drove into the neighboring town, San Jose del Cabo, about 20 miles from here. It’s a whole different kind of place from Cabo San Lucas. With the exception of one narrow strip of hotels along the beach and a couple of other big resorts, the town itself appears to exist mostly for the people who live there. It is much quieter, and the shops seem better stocked with genuine Mexican artwork, antiques and clothing. We shopped a long time and then had a great lunch just off the town square at an espresso cafe.

The people in San Jose were really wonderful, small-town nice--like home. There’s not much English spoken, but we’re getting by pretty well now with our Spanish if we keep to basics. I wouldn’t want to have to describe a medical problem or negotiate a real estate deal, but I can order a quesadilla and dicker for rugs with some confidence.

Courtney got his picture taken with a friendly iguana, and then we watched as it pooped on a white-haired tourist’s pink sun dress. It was the highlight of the boy’s trip so far.

Day Twelve: Ten days is apparently as long as a television-addicted child can survive before his nervous system begins to break down, taking every nervous system in the vicinity with it. The television-free and virtually telephone-free Club Cascadas is a tranquil escape for nerve-damaged adults, but a 6-year-old can only build so many sand castles before he needs a bit of “Sesame Street.” There is a good nanny service available here, we’re told, but we have been reluctant to use it. I don’t know why. Just being nerve-damaged parents, I suppose.

For sanity’s sake and the continued good health of our child, Debi and I have been alternating time with Courtney. I took him to town for lunch today. We ate upstairs at Miguel’s, where we could sit outside and watch the people walk by. Courtney watched a Spanish-language soap opera on the television over the bar the whole time. It seemed to calm him.

Only two more days left. We’re as dark as we’re going to get, and my knees have completely haired over. Not really much left to do but enjoy the beach routine. I’ve gotten into the habit of renting a kayak every morning for the exercise. I paddle out around all the anchored yachts for a little glimpse of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I occasionally see them sitting on their sun decks, with stoic postures and stone faces. They look terribly unhappy. Nice boats, though.

Day Thirteen: Our last full day. I finally rented one of those jet skis. I’ve been holding off, I suppose, because they seemed noisy, dangerous and uncomfortable. They are. I didn’t even keep it for the full half hour I paid for. There’s something about being on this placid and romantic little bay with a screaming two-cycle engine between my knees that unsettles me. They also sound and feel like the snowmobiles back home, and I’m not ready to start thinking about Alaska just yet.

Debi and I finally arranged for a sitter for Courtney and took ourselves out to a farewell night on the town. We had one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten anywhere, at the Rey Sol, a European restaurant just down the beach. We had the sole, which was cooked whole, feathers and all, in some kind of leaves I can’t remember the name of, and it tasted better than any fish deserves to. It was very quiet there tonight. It was like we owned the place, and the service was so warm and genuine that we felt like family by the time we left.

After dinner, we went to Cabo Wabo, Van Halen’s nightspot, for some hot dancing and then came back to the beach to watch the moon over the bay and the anchor lights of the rich and famous one last time. I don’t envy anyone tonight.

Day Fourteen: This is it: 30,000 feet in the air, pointed due north. Debi and Courtney are asleep. We’re headed home. Ten hours from now I’ll be standing in some Anchorage parking lot pushing snow from a frozen Subaru and wondering if the cat survived.

Right now I can’t stop thinking about all the things we’ve been doing the past couple weeks--and all the things we never got to do. I never went fishing. We never went walking in the desert. I wish we’d rented the four-wheelers and done the dunes. I wish I’d learned more Spanish. Those scuba lessons sounded like a lot of fun. Sailing up that coastline must be magnificent. We should have gotten some of those blown-glass pieces we watched them making. And there’s probably a thousand other things we didn’t do that I never even heard about.

I’m comforted by the notion that, after all, I’ve got the title to two weeks a year at the Club Cascadas in my day pack. This turned out to be just a reconnaissance trip, then. Next year these three snow bunnies are going to really have some fun.

GUIDEBOOK: RELAXING IN CABO

Getting there: There is daily nonstop air service from both LAX and San Diego to Los Cabos airport (about 16 miles from Cabo San Lucas) via Alaska Airlines and Aero California. Mexicana flies from LAX to Los Cabos via Mazatlan. Flights to Los Cabos from other area airports--Burbank, Ontario, Orange County and Long Beach--connect through LAX or San Diego.

Accommodations: Club Cascadas de Baja, Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico 011-52-684-3-07-38 or 3-04-09. Resort condominiums at the complex may be rented through Tricom Management, Inc. of Anaheim, (714) 779-7900 or 777-3700. Rates range from $105 to $575 per night in low season (April 15 to Nov. 14) and from $185 to $750 per night in high season (Nov. 15 through April 14), with a two-night minimum. Units range from one-bedroom apartments with patio to a top-of-the-line four-bedroom suite with private balcony, pool and Jacuzzi. All units have full kitchens, but there are no telephones or televisions. MasterCard and Visa are accepted.

Dining/night life: None of the following restaurants and night clubs has telephones or street numbers: Cabo Wabo, Avenida Lazaro Cardenas; Squid Roe, Avenida Lazaro Cardenas; El Rey Sol, on the road to Playa El Medano; Miguel’s, Avenida Lazaro Cardenas. The Hotel Melia San Lucas is on the Playa El Medano, 011-52-684-3-10-00 or 3-10-60; for reservations, telephone (800) 336-3542.