A car camping trip down the length of Baja would be amazing, but we only had about 12 days, so we ended up booking a flight to Cabo and renting a small car. Reading up on Baja for the trip, I hadn't realized just how much of an underwater aquarium it was, and so close to us, so I was really excited to go!
2/10/22
We flew from Phoenix to LAX to San Jose del Cabo. We picked up our rental car after we arrived. It was a bit of a scam (as all renting in Mexico is, as we had read beforehand) b/c they make you take a certain mandatory liability insurance, even if your credit card covers it. So it takes the car from about $10/day to almost $50/day. But we were more or less expecting this.
After picking up the car, we drove to San Jose and grabbed fish tacos from a popular place. We then checked into our air bnb (a nice little apt) and drove down to the beach where we took a walk along the long (and wide) sandy beach of San Jose del Cabo. The beach was empty and we watched the sunset and saw some whales. Afterwards we checked out the artwalk in the plaza central of San Jose. We ended the night getting some very local tacos.
2/11/22
I sent an email early in the morning accepting a job to work in Crested Butte helping with climate modeling.
In the morning, we joined a whale watch tour out of San Jose with Salty Cabo tours (captain Roland). It was really great!! We saw so many humpbacks, including 2 full breaches, fin slaps, spy hopping, and tail dives. The force and power as they breach is stunning. It almost reminds me of an erupting volcano. Wow! After the tour we drove to Cabo San Lucas. We walked a bit along the beach. The water was a nice turqoise color. We had tacos at a local joint just off of the beach before we drove to Todos Santos.
Todos Santos is a cute little town that has a hippy/artsy/van-lifer vibe. We had a beer in town and then went to the beach to watch the sunset and to watch Olive Ridley turtle hatchlings be released. Volunteers in the area collect the eggs to protect them and watch over them in a sanctuary area. Then when they hatch, they collect them up and let us watch the cute lil guys as they move so slowly towards the ocean. So cute! We had delicious tacos in Todos Santos (Elisha's very, perhaps, of the trip) and then drove at night to La Paz to our little air bnb
2/12/22
We had early morning street breakfast burritos on our way to the pier. There we did a whale shark tour with Jay or Whale Shark Diaries (Jay is a conservationist who helps with research on Whale Sharks. On our way out to the spot the sharks usually hang out, we saw some dolphins. During our tour we got to swim with several whale sharks!! Really cool! So huge and gentle creatures. There was one other person on the tour, Inron, from Hawaii. He told us that Kilauea volcano was again erupting and had a lava lake. (This will become important later if you read my next blog).
We walked around town after the tour and got some street tacos. We then walked along the malecon checking out the art (murals and statues), the ocean, and getting some icecream. We had dinner at a taco place. It was pretty funny because they actually sanitized us with spray as we walked in. Seemed like a bit overkill, but we had a good chuckle about it. Everyone in Mexico really enthusiastically wore masks, even outside.
2/13/22
In the morning we went shopping for food and then got some street tacos. We were scheduled for a boat tour that was delayed--"Mexican time"--they old us, but it was quite delayed. We then headed out to a little island to snorkel and swim with cute sea lions. Along the way we followed 2 humpback whales, who came up very close to the boat. As we continued on, the propeller on the boat broke, so we landed at a pretty beach and switched out boats. Our first captain was a really nice guy. He was deaf, so communicating all of that was interesting, but he was such a nice guy. We then sailed across to Espiritu Santo Island. The island is full of beautiful water bays with cliffs and mountains. We landed at a beach to relax, drink beer, eat ceviche, and swim. It was rough (and fun!) water to get there; the waves were big and we all got soaked. On the boat ride back (far less rough), we stopped at shallow Balandra Bay (calf deep) to watch the sunset and take pictures at the iconic mushroom rock. We watched the end of the super bowl at our airbnb and then went out for yummy tacos and margaritas.
2/14/22
Valentine's Day!
We had breakfast burritos at our favorite street breakfast place. We then drove to beautiful Balandra Beach. We hiked around to some hidden beaches, then we hiked up in the hills for stunning view of turqoise waters. From above, with the shallow sandbars, the water looked like auroras. So beautiful! We waded a bit in the clear lagoon. They only allow a certain amount of people at the beach and so you can only be there for a half day in the morning or half day in the afternoon. So when the 1/2 day is up, they come with police sirens to clear the beach. Pretty funny. We then drove to Tecolote beach, and then we hiked up to another nice viewpoint. We had tacos for lunch at our favorite La Paz taco place.
We then rented rollerblades and skated the entire Malecon (about 8 miles of smooth path along the ocean). It was my first time ever rollerblading, and it was a lot of fun. After returning our skates, we had happy hour cocktails overlooking the bay from a rooftop restaurant. We then watched the sunset while eating ice cream. After than we walked around admiring more murals before going to have fish tacos at a fish place. We walked around some more before finishing the Valentine's day off with some margaritas.
2/15/22
We went to the mercado central in the morning and had burritos and empanadas for breakfast as well as some fresh smoothies. We then drove to Puerto Chale and took a boat to watch grey whales. They were everywhere! Seriously everywhere!We saw a few breach and spy hop, and we hung out for a while with a mother and calf who were very friendly. They hung right by the boat, so close that we even got to touch them. You realize just how big they are when they were right next to us and our boat. We also even got wet from blowhole spray.
After the tour we had fish tacos before heading on the road to Adolfo Lopez Mateo. At ALM, we saw a nice sunset over the water and went to a street taco stand for dinner. Adolfo Lopze Mateo is a very tiny fishing community. There aren't many places to stay or eat, but we stayed at a pretty large house (from airbnb) that was very cheap (like all our Mexican air bnb's).
2/16/22
We went on a grey whale tour from ALM. While waiting for some other people to share a tour with, we enjoyed some huevos rancheros at the port. We boated past some cool sand dunes. Lots of whales here too. We got really close to a huge grey whale and saw some mating activity. And we saw another mom and calf. We had fish tacos at the port for lunch. We just kind of hung out at our place and walked a bit around the small town in the afternoon. We had fish tacos at a cool beachside taco place.
2/17/22
We joined another grey whale tour. We saw *so* many whales!! And lots of them spyhopping. We also hung out with a couple friendly whales who spy-hopped around us and let us pet them. So amazing!
Afterwards, we drove to Loreto. We had to go over a little mountain pass to get to Loreto and the Gulf of California. After checking into our cute and tiny little air bnb, we drove up a a winding road into the Sierra Giganta mountains to the San Javier mission, an old Spanish mission. We had tacos for dinner at a taco stand and then went for some paletas (real fruit popsicles) as we walked around the plaza central.
2/18/22
We walked around the plaza central and malecon in the morning. We had breakfast burritos from a taco truck on the malecon and got chai teas as well. We then went on a time share tour to Villa del Palmar in order to get a much reduced whale watch tour (the blue whale tours were very expensive for some reason) and a free fancy brunch. The place was very fancy and in a beautiful location, but we of course said no.
We took a hike on the Hart trail from Rattlesnake beach (near Tripui) to a nice viewpoint over the ocean and islands in the area. Really nice views within the rugged desert and with cacti in the foreground. We then took a hike up Tabor Canyon, also known as Steibeck Canyon because he hiked it and wrote about it in his book "Log from the Sea of Cortez". The canyon was really cool with some crazy rocks and geology, a little bit of slot canyoning, and some little pools of water. At times, you had to climb up ropes to continue. We had dinner at a delicious local pastor taco joint on the outskirts of town, and then we went to the plaza central for more paletas.
2/19/22
We got breakfast burritos by the malecon again and then went on a blue whale tour. We saw several blue whales, the largest animal to ever live on earth (100+ft long). We also saw some fin whales. We had a cool interaction with a mother fin whale and her calf. She left the calf near our boat and went off (to feed we think), so the calf just swam around, very close to our boat, for awhile, so we got really good looks at it. We could even see it underwater.
We had lunch at our favorite taco place in Loreto, then we drove all the way to Cabo San Lucas. On the way we stopped at Todos Los Santos for Elisha's favorite taco place in Baja (the one we had eaten at before when we went to see the turtles).
We had planned one more night in Loreto, but we had been tipped off to this cool "marine safari" in Cabo during our travels. We had booked to do the trip on our last day in Cabo, but the weather forecast looked bad for that day, so the marine naturalist called us up and asked if we could move a day forward. This was going to be a once in a lifetime experience, so we said yes! We cancelled our airbnb in Loreto and book one in Cabo San Lucas. It was a nice little one, in more of the local area (not the touristic area).
2/20/22
Today was our full day Marine Safari with Fernanda of Latitude Encounters. It's a day out in the ocean, far from the rest of the tours, looking for whatever we can find (humpbacks, orcas, dolphins, marlin, rays, sharks), and then jumping in with them if it's appropriate and we're able. On the tour we saw sea lions, bottlenose dolphins, an olive ridley turtle, a mobula ray, marlin, fin whales, and humpback whales. We saw several humpbacks breaching and doing other behaviors like fin and tail slapping. There was a report of orcas in the area, but we didn't see any. We got to swim with the dolphins, but the highlight was swimming several times with the humpbacks!!!!! Such an amazing experience. I already want to do it again. They're so big and smooth and graceful under the water.
Once we were back from our tour we went for drinks along the marina strip and had a caricature drawn of us. Then we drove to San Jose del Cabo where our next air bnb nights would be. Our airbnb was super nice. Large apartment with a courtyard and windows overlooking the plaza central, so that we could watch all the goings on down there. For dinner, we broke out of the local taco mode and went to a fancy artisanal taco place downtown. Definitely unique and delicious! We then had churros in the plaza for dessert.
2/21/22
We drove to Los Barilles and walked along the beach for a bit before having drinks: mango margarita for E and a mango/passionfruit smoothie for me on the beach. Los Barilles was a weird place. Too many gringos and side by side vehicles. We felt like we were back in Quartzite. Not a local around. We even looked at a real estate place and it was a gringa running it, and prices were American expensive. Although the water was nice, I was happy we didn't stay too long. On the way to Los Barilles we stopped at the Tropic of Cancer demarcation line.
We then drove to historic Santiago village, a cute village at the foot of the mountains with old-time Mexican charm. Next we drove to Cabo Pulmo, which is home to a marine park. Snorkeling and diving are supposed to be really good here, but the season had just ended as the water had turned "green". This time of year the water gets cloudy, due to water temperature and currents I think. When the water is "green" visibility isn't very good, so we didn't try snorkeling. To get back to San Jose, we drove a back, coastal road on a rough dirt road.
We had a dinner of tacos and then ice cream in the plaza central
2/22/22!
Last day in Mexico, so why not due a whale watch!? We did an early morning whale watch out of Cabo San Lucas. We saw *lots* of breaching humpback whales! A great way to end the trip!
We had tacos for lunch and then had to finish our left over coronas before going to the airport, haha! We had no fines from the rental car company despite being backed into by gringa van lifers from Canada in Todos Santos while parked, getting some scratches from cacti in Loreto, and getting scraped by a car while we were parked in Cabo.
Direct flight from Cabo to rainy Phoenix.
whale count: too many to count
whale species count: 4 (plus whale shark, turtles, and dolphins
taco count: unknown
number of meals with tacos: 31
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