It was shortly after midnight and Dave Beeching Peter Post, and I were finally arriving at our hotel on the outskirts of La Paz on the Baja Peninsula in Mexico.  We had set out from Ashford 24 hours earlier and were all looking forward to our beds after a trip which had involved three trains, three planes, and two taxi rides to finally get us here.  Fortunately the hotel was as good as its word and the night porter was there to show us to our room and a really welcome rest.

We woke the next morning to a cloudless sky and a beautiful sunny day and the 24 hours of travelling the day before was soon forgotten as we sat on a terrace overlooking the sea having our breakfast.  We were on the Baja Peninsula, the bit of Mexico directly below California which has the Pacific Ocean breaking onto its western shore and the Sea of Cortez, which we were looking over, on its eastern side, separating the peninsula from the rest of Mexico.  Our plan was to spend 7 days paddling and camping our way around the island of Espiritu Santo and its sister island of Partida, in the Sea of Cortez, both of which we could see a few miles from where we were sitting.  The two islands are deserted, apart from the odd fisherman’s hut, and are surrounded by a marine nature reserve.

We spent the morning sorting out all of the kit that we had arranged to rent from Baja Outdoor Adventures, run by a chap from Pembrokeshire, Ben Gillam, and doing the shopping for provisions from the local Wal Mart whilst the afternoon was spent chilling out around the pool.

The next day, Saturday, 20th March, we were picked up from our hotel by BOA staff and driven to Tecolote, the nearest point to the islands, where we packed our boats, several times, before finally getting everything in, and setting off on the two hour crossing to the south of Espiritu Santo.  BOA had suggested the day before that we might like to postpone the crossing for a day as Force 4-5 north easterly winds were expected for Saturday but, whilst it was quite windy, we were heading pretty much into the wind most of the way and the sea state was not too bad.

We paddled for a short while to our overnight stop and found a couple of other, guided BOA groups already set up on the beach.  We set up our camp and then joined them underneath there awnings to get out of the blisteringly hot sun and were welcomed with ice cold beers.  A boat soon arrived to take off those at the end of their trip and deposited a group of Californian school children on a nature trip, who were taking over the kayaks left behind by those departing.  They left before nightfall leaving us alone on the beach with a couple of BOA guides waiting for another group which would be arriving the following day.

We were up by 07:00 the next day and by 09:30 we were back on the water starting our exploration of the coastline with occasional snorkelling stops on the headlands to get a close up view of the hundreds of species of brightly coloured fish and other marine life of the island. 

The rest of the trip went much the same way and we completed the circumnavigation, on a figure of 8 route, by the Friday afternoon and crossed back to Tecolote on the Friday afternoon rather than the Saturday morning, as had originally been envisaged, mainly because the sea was like a mill pond but winds were expected on the Saturday morning which would have made the crossing substantially more difficult.  Certainly, with our flights leaving early on Sunday morning, we could not have afforded to find ourselves stuck on the island by bad weather for an extra day.

The highlights of the trip were swimming with the sea lions at the colony off the north point of the islands, watching them perform their party tricks for us, even coming up and nipping Dave and Pete; the dolphins chasing fish around our kayaks just after we launched on the Monday morning; and seeing the incredibly varied and colourful marine life whilst snorkelling.  The kayaking was not as straightforward as we had expected, with three days of strong winds and big swells giving challenging paddling when other groups were forced to leave their kayaks on the beach and explore the interior of the island on foot or were taken to the sea lion colony in motor boats.  The weather was very warm, too hot really for just sitting on the beach unless some shade could be found.  Even at night, the temperature was normally in the mid 20 degrees and a sleeping bag was hardly needed.  By contrast, the sea was not as warm as might have been hoped for and we generally had to resort to swimming and snorkelling in some sort of clothing e.g. cags, if one was expecting to stay in for anything for than a minute or two.  The camping spots were beautiful, big sandy bays, most of the time we had them to ourselves, with fantastic views out to sea though this also meant that there were no snorkelling opportunities available at the camp sites themselves as they were too far from the headlands.  A big plus was that, in March, the camp sites were mostly free of mosquitoes and other nasty, little, flying beasties.

Having crossed back to Tecolote of Friday afternoon, we camped on Tecolote beach for the night, Dave and I putting up our tents, Pete sleeping in the open air, and were picked up Saturday morning and taken back to La Paz where we checked back into our hotel for our last night in Mexico.

We flew back Sunday morning, the flight back taking even longer than the flight over and finally arrived back at Ashford at 20:00 on the Monday evening.  Such long journey times are a definite drawback to such trips.  I was, however, well impressed with Mexico.  The food was good, none of us went down with Montezuema’s revenge, the people were very friendly and most spoke English, the hotel was beautiful, in lovely landscaped gardens, and the streets of La Paz were clean and well maintained.