Baja

LORETO

15 February- last day in Mexico 😢

It’s been a mixed day.
We’re extremely saddened by the devastation that has been caused to the North Island by the cyclone in New Zealand. Our friend Paul is a policeman in Hastings / Napier / Hawks Bay and is having to help people deal with the aftermath. Tens of thousands of people are without power, have been evacuated, their homes and businesses ruined all over the North Island. We were contacted by the first place we were staying in next week to say don’t come to the North at all as it was impossible to get to them and everywhere was wrecked so I rebooked our flights and started cancelling and rebooking everything else. Then our other places contacted us to say that we can reach them (via detours) and that they would really appreciate our business and our support of their local communities and businesses so I’m just waiting for Air NZ to get back to me… the plan is that we continue as originally planned with some location and accommodation changes.

It’s also our last day in Mexico so it would have been lovely to spend it out there enjoying it instead of inside researching and rebooking everything but hey, we started the trip with challenges and we’re ending this part of of the trip with different ones.

We have loved Baja. We’re determined to return here without broken ties, hideous flu, crippling back pain and when it’s less windy!

I’ve particularly loved Loreto. It’s the closest place I had in my head of what old Baja would look like and the whale trips have been amazing.

The only time I’ve been out today is for dinner and clearly we ended it with local yummy food including guacamole and a margarita, rude not to…sorry it’s such a fuzzy picture.

Things I’ve loved and will particularly miss about Baja:

🪗🎶 ~ Music everywhere at any time of the day (or Saturday night, all night), especially the “mobile discos” ie cars, bikes, skateboarders, people walking down the street with boom boxes (like the 80’s!) blasting out music, mostly traditional Mexican. Plus of course an obsession with 60’s – 80’s rock nights 🤘🏼
🐕 ~ dogs everywhere! Some strays but mainly with collars taking themselves out for walks, catching up with their doggy pals and begging strangers for cuddles.
🌶️🍹🌮 ~ Mexican food and drink. Delicious.
☀️🕶️ 🌵🌊~ winter sun, the desert, the sea
🐋 ~ enough said
😵‍💫 Randomness! Things that made me smile. Supermarkets called Bimbo, iguanas (real ones) in gift shops…

🪩💃🏼 MORNING DISCO 🕺🪩
So as we come to the end of our trip to this magical part of the world I needed a song to summarise how I feel and how much I’ll miss it and I found it in a genre I don’t usually connect with. And that’s what travel is all about – finding new things to love and open your mind.

It’s by Luke Combs and it’s called Moon Over Mexico (2019).The words are perfect and it has a lovely tune.

By the way Tim McGraw, God did NOT make Mexico so that “nagged” husbands could escape America. The things you find when you start looking for stuff on the internet! It’s a hilarious song (not intentionally) so if you’re bored then Google Why God Made Mexico.

“I can still see your blue sky, Blue eyes hanging on a mango kiss, Hear the waves and the breeze and the Joshua trees, Was just about as good as it gets, Taste the salt on the rim, feel that sand on your skin, And the wild in the wind like I’m right there again,

Under a moon over Mexico

Holding onto you as the low tide roll, Whatever that buzz was, I ain’t felt it since, But I can’t seem to let it go, And there was a shine in the dark, a flame from a spark, And a lime in a Pacifico

Under a moon over Mexico”

We’ll be back…

💕14 February 💜

❤️4💰~ People are estimated to have spent $23.9 billion on Valentine’s Day in 2022—up from $21.8 billion in 2021… We contributed exactly £0 of that in either year (we’re such romantics!) and only ate out tonight because our choice was that or starve! We went to Cafe Ole (good name!) and sat on plastic chairs and had a great time. Here we are outside a different restaurant that made an effort for its valentine customers hence was only attractive to us for an ironic photo opportunity. We took two pics but as Craig’s hair makes him look like a baby orangutan 🦧 I clearly chose this one 😆.

Today was a good day. Craig’s favourite so far. Up early, met our group – all Americans and all lovely – and travelled across the peninsula to Magdalena Bay. It took just under 2.5 hours through great scenery; I took this out of the van – it was just about our last view of the Sea of Cortez before heading across mountains to the Pacific.

We arrived, got onto a small boat and spent three hours on the water watching these amazing grey whales. All mamas with babies. I love this picture; I’m proud of myself for such an action shot on a mobile phone.

Look how close this one is! It emerged right under the bow where I was sitting. The one below is to show the scale – females grow up to 55 foot / 17 metres. The babies were between two weeks and five weeks old. They are very different from blue whales who like to keep their distance. Greys are happy to interact and as the babies get older they get bolder and will get even closer to the boats.

The poor Mums haven’t eaten in months. They come to this secluded, shallow bay to give birth and raise their babies in safety before taking them along treacherous route to the extreme north to feed.

I took a LOT of pictures and Craig has great footage on Tickety Tock.
On the way back to land we passed a sand spit with lots of pelicans and a few cormorants.

It’s our last full day in Mexico tomorrow, I can’t believe we’ve been here for 24 days, it’s gone so quickly.

🪩💃🏼MORNING DISCO 🕺🪩

Another “dodgy” song link today… I did consider the very aptly named song by Aha – We’re looking for the whales – and who doesn’t love a bit of 80’s Norwegian electro pop – but the song is frankly pants. Sorry lovely Morten Harket…

This on the other hand is a great classic by David Gray (yep, yep, tenuous) from the album White Ladder (1999) and I found myself humming it quiet a bit today so I hope you will forgive me and just enjoy it.

13 February

When I was a child, I think I was probably about five years old, definitely not older than seven, I went to the Natural History Museum in London with Granddad Gibbs. I’m sure there were other members of my family there but I only remember being with him. There are two other things I remember as clearly as if they were yesterday. At the top of the staircase in the main hall was a slice of preserved giant sequoia tree that was so massive it made me dizzy to look at the top. The other thing was the whale room. I loved it instantly. There were (plastic I think) life size replicas of all sorts of whales and I was overwhelmed with how absolutely enormous and beautiful the blue whale was. It’s the first experience I remember of bonding with anything relating to the sea. I have always thought I’d never see a blue whale as I presumed they were swimming thousands of miles from anywhere and that it was an impossible dream.

Well boys and girls dreams can come true. I don’t mind admitting I sobbed quietly for quite a while and had a chat with Granddad after my first sighting. Dreaming of them for almost 50 years then seeing one fairly close up will do that to you!

It’s impossible to convey the size and beauty of them. They don’t breach like other whales and they don’t descend with a flick of their tail as they’re too big. So the photos don’t do them justice. We saw three. THREE! This one was 79 foot / over 24 metres!!! Another glided under (our pretty tiny 😬) boat and took ages to clear – apparently this is really rare, our guide had never experienced that before and I tell you he went pretty crazy with excitement!

We were later treated to a humpback whale who clearly was thinking “erm, hello, I’m here too, look at me,me,me!” – I messed up with the camera so my photo isn’t great but what an exit!

It wasn’t just the sea that wowed us, the early morning sky was amazing too.

And I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this double mountain range that I named The KitKats!

Without doubt it was one of the best days I’ve ever spent on water and I’ve had plenty of great ones. Happy happy happy 😍

📰 FNF News

🦄 ~ Imogen turns four years old on 14 February. She’s a true born and bred Yorkshire lass and demonstrates a lot of the characteristics of ladies brought up in God’s Own County – she is loving, kind, amusing and she definitely knows her own mind! Happy birthday Immie! X

🪩MORNING DISCO 💃🏼

I’ve taken a bit of a liberty with the tenuous song link today but this particular blog needs a joyous uplifting love song and so here’s a great one – it’s Bob Marley and the Wailers (yep, I know, sorry 🤫) with Is This Love from the album Kaya (1978).

11 February

Hola!

What an absolutely lovely place Loreto is. I just knew it would be.

We had a great flight yesterday with Calafia Airlines. It wasn’t the biggest plane and we felt every bump (it’s been quite windy) but they were on time, really efficient and friendly and they respond to WhatsApp in seconds – British Airways take note! It’s such a small airport (most people stayed on the plane to fly on to Tijuana) that we were actually in a taxi within four minutes of leaving the plane!!

We arrived at our lovely hotel Posada del Cortes, headed off to explore the gorgeous small town (centred around a village square and cobbled streets rather than the seafront line La Paz) then spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, eating and meeting our tour company – Loreto Sea & Land. All trips on / into water had been cancelled for the last five days so we were pleased to hear that our first trip was on! More of that later…

Very close to our place is a bar called Mike’s (he’s Mexican despite the name) which advertised live music that night 9pm – 12.30 am. It’s so close we knew we would have trouble sleeping so we – of course – went along. We’d have gone regardless of where it was. Well, I’m sure you’ve guessed what kind of music they played and yes they were great!
With our alarms set for 6.45 am we stumbled into bed after 1am and woke feeling, well, not the best we’ve ever felt! Great night! 🍹

Today we headed to Coronodos Island – it’s part of a small group of protected islands full of life -sealions galore (Craig had a very cold snorkel with them, I declined, it was the coldest day we’ve had so far) as well as colonies of gulls, pelicans, petrels and sea ducks, and the largest known colony of the rare Xantus’s Murrelet (this is from Google, it’s not my photo).

We were allowed to explore one of the islands and we also had a lovely lunch on the beach. I thought that the distant peaks on one of the other islands was reminiscent of the Black Cuillins on the Isle of Skye (in this picture immediately below).

It was a great day out. I took so many photos but I’ve held back sharing them all. When we returned it was confirmed that blue whales have been sighted so that’s what we’re doing tomorrow, trying to see if we can find them; apparently they are quite big 😆! It’s the original reason why I chose Loreto. It’s a long trip, they’re on the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula but hopefully it’ll be magical.
We’ve just returned from a delicious authentic Mexican (quite posh Mexican) dinner and will be trying to get an early night. 🙏🐋

🎶 MORNING DISCO 💃🏼 🪩

Finally! I’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunity to play this great song. Now, I don’t want anyone having a heart attack so sit down for this… it’s a song that’s been released within the last decade 😳! It’s a special song for me and Phil; we love this song, we both love Mexico and we’ve loved dancing to this together. It’s Are You With Me by Lost Frequencies (2014). It’s perfect to represent last night as you can see Craig and I were drinking margaritas in a bar near the water by a blueish neon sign to well after midnight! I would have danced if I wasn’t still trying to rest my foot. Anyway, this one’s for you my lovely Phil.

“I wanna dance by water ‘neath the Mexican sky
Drink some Margaritas by a string of blue lights
Listen to the Mariachi play at midnight
Are you with me, are you with me?”

LA PAZ

9 February – our last night in La Paz

Craig’s videos are available to view – only on TicketyTok so unfortunately, like I’ve finally had to, you’ll have to sign up to watch:

Tiktok: maddogsandenglishtan

We’ve just returned from our last night in La Paz. On a walk earlier today Craig found a lovely place on the beach so we headed there this evening to watch the sunset and have our last meal in this chilled town.

We’ve had a great time. Up early to catch a flight to Loreto, our last stop in Baja 😞 but I can’t be too sad as we have six nights there and we have three exciting trips planned (hopefully the wind holds off and we can get out on the water…🐳 🐋).

MORNING DISCO
Finally, after hearing lots of Santana in San Jose we had a musician at our beach bar this evening who played my favourite Santana song. It’s Oye Como Va (roughly translates as hey, how’s it going?) and it’s from a great album  Abrraxas (1970). Well, I told you every set list here has to include a Santana track and here it is! See you in Loreto!

8 February

So… if you don’t like horses, don’t like stories about horses, don’t like pictures of horses or songs referring to horses then I’d skip this blog entry. You could call it a one-trick pony blog 😉.

I apologise as this is a long one…

To provide a bit of context before I talk about 2023 horses I need to tell you about the 1991 horses!
Sarah and I went to the Dominican Republic that summer. She booked the holiday through Teletext (anyone under a certain age should Google that!) and as a treat we splashed out on an adventure day which included a gentle horse ride across scrub, over hills and through jungle to a river where we’d leave the horses and get a speedboat back. Sounds great!
Neither of us had been on a horse before. No safety gear or special instructions, just get on your horse and follow the guide…

My horse was amazing – she really went for it. I was 100% convinced that I would be returning to a career in racing or as a jump jockey because there I was, my very first time on a horse, galloping fast and jumping over ditches and having the time of my life. I didn’t see much of Sarah. In fact I didn’t see much of anyone as I was off on my own with Sweaty Betty as I named her. The 21 year old Catherine was wild and free racing across the landscape.
Sarah, who named her horse Piece of 💩, was having an entirely different experience as her horse did everything it could to be on one hand unbelievably uncooperative and on the other try and scare the living daylights out of her. At one stage she had to be rescued off the very edge of a scary cliff – she kept asking how do you put a horse in reverse and someone had to back it out for her so it didn’t throw her to her death. I am crying with laughter as I write this picturing them on the precipice because 32 years later it is pretty funny. To me. So sorry Sarah!
When we got back to the UK I then joined my Dad for a horse ride at a club. Oh. My. God. As I’d only ever ridden once (yes but like a champion for goodness sake!) someone held the reigns the entire time, we didn’t go faster than a slow walk and obviously I had to wear the full safety gear. So that was the end of my glittering career dreams and I haven’t ridden again until today.

Picture the scene – a 30 minute drive to Rancho San Lorenzo, a real working ranch in the desert. Views of the sea, mountains, cactus desert – absolutely idyllic; it was every beautiful cliche you could imagine. It started with a trip to the loo (!) and a chicken I named Senora Banos.

Craig had never ridden before and he took to it instantly, his horse Ace lived up to its name and his two hours were great; he loved every minute.
My horse instantly disliked me. Well, it clearly had taste and when I say taste I also mean it stopped at every single blade of dried grass, bush, anything, anything at all that could be eaten. Our pace was about minus 5mph!! It wouldn’t listen to me, ignored every single command, would then cantor wildly at the most ridiculous times and basically let me know who was boss. He actually laughed at me, I kid you not. Consequently I named him El Jefe (The Boss, one of the few cool words I know in Spanish) or – more frequently I called him “Oh, FFS not again”! Look at the absolute disdain in his eye in the picture when he’s back at the ranch. 😆

What a great place. Despite my lack of any authority whatsoever we both absolutely loved our experience which ended with a fab brunch with views back at the ranch.

I write this with an achy backside and will be heading out for drinks to dull the pain later!

MORNING DISCO

I was singing this in my head the entire time that I wasn’t saying FFS… the brilliant Horse With No Name by America (1971). Craig tells me that when he was in Vietnam 23 years ago it was played everywhere all the time and everyone joined in the lalalalala bits with gusto! However, in honour of my bosses Charlie and James Osmond and also of course in tribute to Piece of 💩 and El Jefe, I have to also include the short but fabulously off the wall track Crazy Horses by The Osmonds (1972). Two for the price of one today; enjoy!

6 February

Hola amigos!

We spent yesterday exploring the town, it’s not the cutest but it’s alright.
We went to meet the folks at Dive in La Paz and were disappointed to hear that the whaleshark tour was off; there are no whalesharks in the bay and apparently they’re pretty critical to a whaleshark tour! The seals were still available so we weren’t too disappointed. Well, we were a bit. Quite a bit. But you can’t control nature – it doesn’t turn up on demand simply because we’re here! Also rather unfortunately the weather is about to turn very windy so the harbour is closing tomorrow and there won’t be another opportunity to get onto or into the water before we leave. Armed with that news I found a ranch about 25 minutes out of town and we’re heading there on Wednesday. We are finally going horse riding! They’re going to help me with my foot. I shall take double anti-histamines and keep my legs covered as instructed by Dad so I don’t scrape my skin off. I’ve been horse riding exactly twice in my life – once with Dad (1992!) and once with Sarah in the Dominican Republic (1991!) – I’ll share a bit more about that funny story when I report on Wednesday’s horse riding experience.

Back to yesterday… We had a lovely lunch opposite the Malecon and I bizarrely ordered both a (local delicious) white wine AND a strawberry (non-alcoholic) pina colada which was pretty big…hee hee!

Later on we had a pleasant dinner which was partly disrupted by me giving Craig a habanero chilli 🌶️ by mistake… I said, oh these are delicious so he ate most of it in one go; it scorched his mouth, he started streaming alarmingly and he couldn’t even talk for about ten minutes 🥵. Whoops! No lasting damage done. I hope…

Up early this morning to join the seal trip. It took 90 minutes to get to the site called Los Isoltes; quite a way in a small boat. Craig dived twice with them and had an amazing time. Hopefully I can add a link at some stage to his underwater footage. Here he is about to descend whilst my foot is juxtaposed in front. I went one-fin snorkelling with them (I’ll be starting a trend!) and it was fantastic to be back in the water without putting pressure on my foot. The seals were really playful and I had a great time! I’ve also added a picture of some of them playing near our boat.

After the two dives / snorkels we headed to a remote beach on one of the islands and had a lovely ceviche lunch they’d prepared then we headed back. We are now chilling on our balcony after hot showers before heading out for beers.

No FNF News today 📰 but the morning disco song chose itself today.

It’s the man himself Seal with the great song Crazy – clearly the only choice after our crazy seal day!! Enjoy – see you again on Wednesday or Thursday x 🦭 🦭 🦭

5 February

Oh la from La Paz! Definitely not the one in Bolivia…

It’s early Sunday morning, I can hear birds singing and not much else despite the fact we’re on a busy road which was very much alive with noise until the wee hours as La Paz set about properly enjoying its Saturday night! As did we but I race ahead of myself…

After a leisurely breakfast and packing session yesterday morning Jesus kindly drove us to the bus station, yep, we’re living the high life!
Here is our regular breakfast place (where I shamed myself with the ham, egg and chips “incident) and the blue building behind is El Marinero Borracho (The Drunken Sailor) where we ate many times. Both lovely places with lovely people and whilst they both look pretty basic the good was great.

The bus took a nice circuitous route through the desert 🏜️ 🌵 and lots of small towns and just under five hours after leaving we arrived in La Paz.

We are staying in Hotel Lorimar in the sea view suite for six nights. It sounds very swanky I know but it’s the cheapest place we’re staying throughout our entire trip! Not terrible at all, it’s very basic but definitely not reminiscent of the suite we stayed in as a treat for one night in Kuala Lumpur a few years ago after diving in Sipadan – it was so posh that when we arrived (looking as we do like scruffy divers) the doorman asked if we were at the right hotel. Cheeky! I’ll never forget that. Made me laugh. Any how…

Here’s my view as I’m writing this – I’m on the balcony a few steps above the main road and you can see the sea on the other side of the Malecon down the road…we are pretty close! It might be noisy but it’s cheap and in a great location. You can’t have everything…

After checking in last night we headed off almost immediately to meet Brooke and Jed. They’re an Aussie couple we met in Cabo Pulmo who happen to be here at the same time. We had yummy seafood tacos and, I’m sure you’ve guessed; margaritas! Plus Corona chasers. We realised we were the last people there so not wanting to outstay our welcome we headed off to walk the Malecon, a paved walkway which fronts most of the city along the coast – I’ll take and share pictures another time.

It’s going to hit 27 degrees today, nice. We’re off to explore the town and meet our dive crew at the imaginatively named Dive In La Paz… I’m hoping to get in the water tomorrow! Not diving but swimming with seals in the morning and whale sharks in the afternoon! Fingers crossed…🦭

I’m introducing a new section called FNF News (aka friends and family news) so I can say hello and congrats to lovely people.

FNF HEADLINES! 📰

~ Niece Cass Cass Cass passes driving test at her first attempt 🚗🎉 👋

~ Sis-in-law Tracey celebrates early retirement 🍾🎉👋

~ Uncle Paul spends his birthday in the Catlins, South Island, NZ 🎂🍷🥝

~ BBC Matt heads to Vegas to wow them (again!) at the tables 💰🃏🍸🤞

~ Ant celebrates a week in his new home 🏠🥂

~ Phil, Matt and Evan head to warmer climes for a well deserved break ☀️ 🧳 🍻

MORNING DISCO!
The song of the day is a fairly obscure one (unless you’re my Dad who introduced me to this great artist – hi Dad!) by Alan Price who was the keyboard player in The Animals (mostly known for the fabulous song House of the Rising Sun). It’s to celebrate the launch of my news channel and it’s called Papers from one of my favourite albums Metropolitan Man.

There are some great lines in it including:

“On any page you will find disaster, Servant killing off his master and a long lost hero coming out the jungle.

Someone’s secrets up for grabs, Fortunes found in taxi cabs, Find out how your leaders stall and stumble… in all the papers, papers, read all about the news.”

(There’s a reference in the song to page 3 – of The Sun – nothing terrible but a little outdated so thought I’d mention it).

SAN JOSE DEL CABO

3 February

(5 Feb, added a couple more photos)

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve just returned from brunch at our local where I asked the lovely owner to make me the most British of all foods: ham, eggs and chips. I bow my head in shame. It was delicious though! 😆 Look how embarrassed Craig is…

Last night was fantastic. We went proper “out out” in the Old Town. Craig ordered an Uber and off we went to the Art Walk centred around the main square. Dozens upon dozens of artists had stalls with amazing pictures, sculptures, jewellery, etc. Again, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t take any photos of the art, sorry.
It was really busy and the atmosphere was great; there were street musicians, fire dancers and the obligatory hawkers selling plastic things you throw in the air.

Jesus Our (land) Lord (!) had recommended a couple of places so we first had margaritas at a roof top bar called The Garage. Great views and another great musician playing great stuff including Santana, Pink Floyd and John Lennon.

We then had a slow walk to Baja Brewery where we had locally brewed beers (everyone is at it these days) and there was yet another outstanding band playing Van Halen, Pink Floyd, Santana, etc. (I think it’s the law here that every set must include a Floyd and Santana ditty!). I really must move to San Jose Del Cabo, they are completely stuck in the era of 60’s~80’s rock music like I am! They ended with the absolute classic Sweet Child of Mine which is of course the tune of the day. You can see them behind us if you enlarge the picture.

Today we’re having a very slow walk around the harbour – it’s very ☀️ here today and I’m still taking it easy with my foot. Tonight we’re off to watch the sunset from a fancy pants hotel nearby so I’ll be posting nice pictures of the harbour at some stage. (Updated below including one of Craig at the fancy El Ganzo hotel having sunset drinks – surely another target hotel for Triptease!)

Sadly it’s our last night in SJ; we’ve absolutely loved it! Next full update will be from La Paz, see you there!

🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼

1 February

Quite a shock to the system after being in the middle of nowhere – shops, restaurants, Wi-Fi and real roads!!!
Absolutely loving it so far.

Amazing journey through the desert to get here — Craig’s drone was in full action over the cactus desert.

After leaving Cabo Pulmo we did a detour to the gorgeous Buena Vista and had lunch at the kind of place we can only dream about being able to afford to stay in during this trip- the Buena Vista (Beach) Resort (one for you guys at Triptease methinks!).

We dropped off the car at the airport and salvation arrived in the form of Jesus! Our landlord for five nights. Took us to a cash pint, gave us beer and brought us to our fab place in Playita, the quieter part of town with a newish harbour so it’s a bit fancier than a few years ago when I first discovered it. We’re staying above a gift shop right on the harbour, fabulous!

We went for a very short walk and found a nice bar, they told us a band was going to play later so of course we stayed and well, they were amazing! Played all our music – a lot of Pink Floyd, The Doors, Stones and Dire Straights. Bliss. Plus plenty of margaritas!

Hmmm… unfortunately I can’t select any photos or videos of that night or what I’m about to write about so you’ll need to make do with a picture of the entrance to the harbour.

So, yesterday, armed with slight music and margarita hangovers we headed for our dive club, I went as a non diving passenger and Craig managed two dives.

Whilst they were diving the Captain and I went humpback whale chasing – absolutely amazing! So many of them, breaching right in front of us! Mammas with babies mainly.

So frustrating I can’t share the videos!

I’ll be back with an update in a couple of days.
Adios amigos!

Here’s one for you all – played the other night by the Mexican band we saw!

WISH YOU WERE HERE!

CABO PULMO – 27 ~ 30 January

Woohoo – we have Wi-Fi! Such a luxury you take for granted…

We are in San Jose del Cabo and it’s 1 Feb but thought I would update my blog about Cabo Pulmo too whilst Craig is out diving one of the best shark dives in Mexico that I’ve been dreaming about for over ten years!
Hey, don’t feel bad for me though, I’ve had an exciting morning going to our AirBnB landlord’s place to put some washing on followed by a trip to the pharmacy to top up on medicine and bandages and I’m currently heating up water in a frying pan (yep, that’s the only option!) so I can have a cup of black decaf Yorkshire tea whilst waiting for our washing to finish. Let NO ONE say I am not living La Vida Loca…

There is nothing and I mean nothing to do in Cabo Pulmo unless you dive. Not even a beach I could walk to – they are there but some way off, you needed to scramble over rocks and I couldn’t get there with my foot. It’s very remote on the east coast and the last 15km of the journey was down an extremely bumpy unmade road which took 45 minutes to navigate and caused us some consternation in our hire car! No harm done thank goodness. All I did was go to the very basic “resort” restaurant all the time and read a lot of books so a consequence my clothes are quite a bit tighter than when I arrived!

Craig of course loved it. No one but divers and aged American hippies living away from it all for miles and miles around – he had lots of fun with his drone and enjoyed the diving.

I don’t have amazing photos to share of course but here’s what I do have: our cabana, the dive shop / restaurant and the view from the restaurant. It’s a proper middle of nowhere absolute basic dive place which, if you can dive, is all you need!

TODOS SANTOS – Thursday 26 January

Finally we’ve had a day of doing something more interesting than recovering in our room. It’s was our last day in Todos Santos so we forced ourselves out! Not a bad day overall…

Drove to the deserted wild beach and watched whales a few metres off the shore.

Helped release baby turtles!

For dinner we went to a lovely restaurant I had pre-booked called The Green Room (it’s a surfing term) – it’s the only restaurant on the beach on this stretch of coast – and we watched the sunset as whales jumped out of the water just offshore. Nice. Overpaid for ultra fancy version of Mexican food but hey, it was worth it!

I have fab videos of turtle release and a beaching whale at sunset but unfortunately I can’t upload videos, even short ones.

We have a long drive to Cabo Pulmo down unmade roads and there’s no Wi-Fi there so there will be no further updates until five or six days time.

Sunday 22 January

So…

Our luck hasn’t quite changed yet!
On a Saturday we had a great flight after a lovely time in United’s lovely lounge, stayed in a perfectly pleasant hotel next to LAX, got to the airport at 4.30 am (!) and arrived at Cabo airport on time. So far so good. We picked up the car, did the obligatory getting a bit lost then made our way to lovely Todos Santos. Craig was a bit under the weather but he valiantly drove on through amazing mountains until we reached Todos Santos.
Found our place (eventually – I had booked a place in the hills rather than town), then I knocked my toe AGAIN as we were unpacking the car and Craig suddenly faded succumbing to the most hideous flu. We headed for bed to sleep at 3.15 pm and woke up this morning at 6am!
Luckily this lovely restaurant is a two minute walk so we headed there this morning and it’s the only place I’ve seen or been to in Baja so far as we are both now trying to get better at our place… you have to laugh! I’m writing this from bed!

My early morning colleagues at Triptease (hi Bettina, Meg, Bene, Oscar and Luke!) are used to my early morning “discos” so in honour of them and because I love a bit of music I’m going to include a bit of music whenever it’s relevant.

This absolute gem – brilliant example of late 70’s / early 80’s Yacht Music (Google it guys!) – is Ride Like the Wind by Christopher Cross and for the gorgeous HFB (that’s Hannah Barnes to you!) I’m selecting the version with backing vocals by Michael McDonald:

“I’ve got such a long way to go

To make it to the border of Mexico

So I’ll ride like the wind

Ride like the wind”