Baja Sur Mexico bay

Most people, including most of our readers I’m sure, equate “Baja” with Los Cabos. Sure, the area at the end of the peninsula is the one with the most resorts, the golf courses, and the big international airport, but Baja is a very long peninsula.

So long in fact that it’s made up of two Mexican states. Tijuana and the wine country are in one state, while Loreto, La Paz, and lots of wild areas in between are in Baja Sur. I’ll admit I had little idea myself just how much bounty there was in this region, figuring it was a lot of scrub bush and lizards in the middle, then the blue sea on both sides. It turns out this is one of the greatest adventure playgrounds you could imagine. The interior is great for hiking or mountain biking among rock formations and towering cacti, while the waters are filled with a huge variety of sea creatures. On just this one-week trip, I saw dozens of whales, swam with sea lions, saw rays jumping out of the water, helped tag some sea turtles, and swam beside giant whale sharks.

Kick back and check out this video to get a taste of the landscapes and wildlife where the desert meets the sea for hundreds of miles of coastline.

Our latest tour feature tells this story through text and photos, hopefully giving a sense of what a fantastic place this is to visit that’s right on the USA’s doorstep. It’s a whole different world than you can find anywhere to the north and the water goes from pounding waves to surf spots to mellow bays as you move along the coast.

You could book an adventure journey like this through one of the tour companies we’ve linked to in the Baja Sur article below. Or you could explore it while using a small ship as your base by booking a Sea of Cortez trip with Uncruise Adventures.

The independent option would be to rent a car at the airport in Los Cabos and head north. You could spend a few days with the excellent local tour operators in Todos Santos, La Paz, and Magdalena Bay, or keep going north (on surprisingly good highways) and arrive in the cool historic town of Loreto. You can set up tours directly with the companies we’ve linked to in our articles and some adventure-oriented resorts like Villa del Palmar have connections with a local operator with plenty of experience of taking care of foreign tourists in English.

La Paz and Loreto don’t have nearly as many flights coming in each week, but they do both have international airports and Alamo rental car offices.

See the full feature story here: Wild Adventures and Sea Creatures in Baja Sur.