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Mexico's Sea of Cortés:
Dates, Rates and Itinerary
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Out there, hardly yards from our keel were hundreds and hundreds of saddleback dolphins, splashing and leaping and twisting in the rays of golden sunset light.
You’ve heard the phrase, “The water was alive.” Well, yes it was. It frothed and churned and bubbled. For a good twenty minutes.
Then we headed in for dinner and were literally settling bottoms into chairs when Captain Shawnda Gallup’s voice echoed again, “Uh. Folks. We’ve got rays. Dozens of them.”
Sure enough, their large black bodies were just inches below the surface. It was like being surrounded by shadows. Seven-foot-wide shadows. And every so often, a set of wingtips would break the surface. One of the beasts actually jumped. Since when do rays jump?
Back to dinner. This time, the hot rolls actually made it to the table.
“Er, you really don’t want to miss this. It’s a blue whale.”
Capt. Shawnda didn’t need to tell us. A hundred feet of body slid alongside our boat. Good God, the thing was only 20 feet shorter than our entire vessel. And it came up hardly five yards from our starboard side. We could see its dorsal fin nearly filling the lounge window.
Blue whales are the largest in the ocean. A family of six could sit for dinner on its tongue, we were told. A small child could swim through its arteries. And it was just feet from our railing. It surfaced not once but three times before our light faded completely.
Welcome to the Sea of Cortez, American Safari Cruises style.
Most tourists wind up in Cabo San Lucas, at the southern tip Baja California. If you want to see the rest of this stark and beautiful landscape, it usually involves driving, often down the length of the peninsula.
Or, you could take a boat ... a small boat with only 22 passengers and nine crew, which is a lot of crew and a lot of personal attention.
That first night, sometime between the prime rib and the coffee frangelico, the first pod of dolphins appeared off our bow. It was an hour past sunset and six of them were weaving back and forth, their bodies outlined in bioluminescence so they looked like glowing torpedoes under our keel. And this was just the beginning.
The Sea of Cortez was actually formed by a fracture on the San Andreas fault (yes, THAT San Andreas fault). It’s five million years old, making it an infant as seas go. And thanks to a rich stew of plankton, it’s swarming with life: nearly 900 species of fish, half a dozen whales including those mammoth blues, dolphins, sea lions, manta rays, sharks. It’s like the Galapagos, only under water.
Above water, the desert comes right down to the sea, resulting in a surreal mix of sand dunes, cactus and mangrove. Expedition Leader Kevin Martin explained that’s because the cool water pulls moisture out of the clouds before they can reach land.
Distances here, like some of the sea life, are huge. Baja is more than 800 miles long (think Seattle to San Francisco) and over 100 miles wide in places. The sea, itself, is 130 miles at its widest, explaining why we couldn’t see the other side.
We spent our first few days at Isla Partida just north of La Paz. On one outing, we scrambled across boulders to the other side of the island and onto a windswept cliff with water stretching to the horizon.
The next day, it was off for a swim near Los Islotes, bulbous fingers of red basalt north of La Paz worn smooth by weather and stained white with guano. From a skiff, we slipped into the water and were instantly surrounded by slick black heads and twitching whiskers. Dozens of sea lions moved with lightning speed, darting and swooping, doing barrel rolls and folding their bodies backward like gymnasts.
The smallest pups were the most curious. One, hardly bigger than a dog, surfaced in the middle of us, lay back so just his nose and chin were out of the water and slowly backstroked around us. Then the group got a bit too friendly ... a grab here, a nip there. On the rocks, a huge bull bellowed and we figured it was time for a strategic retreat.
The service aboard the Safari Quest is what separates this trip from most others. The food was not only topnotch, it could be custom tailored. One woman, who had recently dropped 75 pounds, stuck to her diet. It was amazing what Chef Gipson could do with Pam-fried egg whites. Meanwhile, the wheelhouse supplied her husband with the latest NCAA basketball rankings.
As for us, Hotel Manager Michael quickly cued into our love of mojitos (lime and rum drinks) by the hot tub and made sure one showed up every day when we hit the water.
Each day brought something different to do and see. One morning, we landed at the foot of a cardon cactus forest. It was a wall of huge cactus fingers set so close together, a cat would have trouble squeezing through. Another day, while we went beach combing. Rich and Judy from the Seattle area found a private beach to enjoy their good bottle of pinot noir. Mary Anne and Joanne from Connecticut went off to find shells. And five others went boulder climbing.Yet another day, it was kayaking along a cliff where the sandstone had weathered into graceful round pillars that folded at water level into thin caves. Above, a curtain of lacy rock feathered out and above that lay a crust dotted with cactus and scrub.
And one other morning we cracked open red rocks to find the most amazing batch of crystal lined geodes (which we got to keep).
Day five was the mules, courtesy of a local man named Alejo. Alejo’s mules wander free to graze the landscape, which isn’t easy in a place that hasn’t seen rain in two years. They’re sleek and healthy looking, most assuredly because they own amazing digestive tracts. Thorns, dead palm fronds, scraggly scrub ... they eat it all.
From the beach at Agua Verde, we rode up a trail, over a ridge and into a vast valley that looked amazingly like Arizona ... long lines of pastel pink hills, scrub desert sand and thirsty looking bushes. Then it was over to a palm oasis, up a ridge and back down to the beach.
But the day’s excitement wasn’t over.
We had just settled in after lunch when Kevin spotted fin whales off the bow. We hopped into the skiff and took off.
“These are the world’s second largest whales. But what’s really interesting is how they use the oxygen they breathe,” Kevin said. “Eighty percent is stored for later use, letting them stay submerged to look for food.”
Lots of fins. Plumes of spray. Then ...
“How about some hot cookies,” came a voice over Kevin’s radio.
We swooped in for what Kevin called a “touch and go,” grabbed a basket of melting hot chocolate chip cookies and were off again. Maybe the whales smelled the cookies, for before we knew it, they were surfacing hardly 30 feet from us.
But that was only an appetizer for the next day, when we drove across the Baja peninsula to the Pacific side for gray whale watching at Bahia Magdelena. From the local skiffs called pangas, we watched a mom and two-month-old calf swim in tandem, so perfectly synchronized that their twin blowholes lined up perfectly.
Then the baby breached ... pushing his head and even one flipper clear out of the water. Not once. Not twice but more than a dozen times.
Our guide Judy explained that gray whales go south each year from Alaska to mate and give birth in the 30-mile-long, 60-foot-deep bay. Here, safe from orcas, the babies drink so much super rich milk a day, they can gain 70 pounds in 24 hours.
The lecture abruptly ended with a fountain of spray. Mom and the kid surfaced only yards from our boat, blowing a geyser straight into our faces. The baby headed straight for us, slipping cleanly under our boat and trailing his white tail within inches of our fingers.
Our last day, we visited Isla Coyote, the only island in the entire Sea of Cortez with permanent residents. From a distance, it looks like one of those rocks you see poking out of the Aegean Sea. But on shore, it’s distinctly Mexican.
Men were gutting and filleting shark-looking monkfish. These would be packed in salt from nearby salt pits and exported to Asia. At another table, huge manta rays got the same treatment. Caught the night before in nets, they would be sent to La Paz and served in seafood tortillas. Three families live here, hauling fresh water from outside or bartering for it with fish. The houses are simple but they do have electricity, thanks to generators, and satellite TV.
And finally, our last night.
Dolphins and rays and that blue whale.And steak and lobster and creme brulee.
And to top it off, more glowing fish in the water, burning stars above and one last mojito in the hot tub.
