Alright folks, we're back! The last 10 or so days has been quite the whirlwind but I'm going to do my best to recap where I've been and what I've experienced so far.
If you read my last post you'll know I was kicking off the trip at a wedding in San Jose del Cabo. As expected the wedding was an absolute blast and the hotel, food, and everything else was top notch. Definitely a great way ease me in to my travels and I think I can confidently say that the four days I had there will be the most luxurious accommodations I experience for the foreseeable future. After the wedding I moved to a hostel and hung around in San Jose del Cabo for a couple more days.
My next mini-adventure was renting a car from the airport in San Jose and driving up to Todos Santos. As it turned out this was both my first bus and first car rental experience of the trip. Driving up coastal baja and passing an infinite amount of cactus, tiny towns, and empty beaches with whales (ballenas) breaching in the pacific was really the first time on the trip that I felt like I was getting into "real Mexico". I stayed in a great little hostel called Todos Santos Hostel-- here I got tuned in to the social aspect of staying in a hostel that has in many ways defined my last two weeks of travel. I've heard the term "travel community" thrown around a good deal but it really has struck me how aptly that name fits. The people I met at that hostel gave me advice, recommendations, and set off a chain of introductions and links that have had me travelling with other people most of the way through the past two weeks. Other than getting to know people and having a few Ballenas (that's what they 40s of beer in Baja) I got my first chance to surf while in Todos Santos, just down the road in a town called Cerritos. Cerritos is a little town with a network of dirt roads that seems to cater to two things-- fishing and surfing. There's a wave (a right) that breaks off a point here where a bright yellow Hacienda sits on the cliffs overlooking the break.
The relaxation from surfing a couple of times put me in the right frame of mind for a full day of travel from Todos Santos to La Paz on the opposite side of the peninsula. This involved a good 4 hours of driving to drop off my rental car in San Jose del Cabo, city busses through Los Cabos to the bus station, and then a 5 hour bus ride before finally arriving in La Paz. Despite the rather exhausting trip I met up with a guy I had met in my previous hostel who was also in La Paz and got a very good sense of the city's nightlife via some local friends of his. I spent my next few days exploring the city and some of the awesome nature in the surrounding area. La Paz sits in a bay on the Sea of Cortez and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the diversity of marine wildlife. Quite possibly the highlight of my trip so far was snorkeling with whale sharks! Sitting in the water and at one point being face to face with a 20+ foot fish (the largest on earth) was otherworldly.
I parted ways with Baja on an overnight ferry crossing the Sea of Cortez to the mainland. The ferry is an eclectic mix of truck drivers, motorists, and pedestrians sharing space on board a ship overnight. While I was in La Paz I found out that a couple of people in my hostel were taking the ferry the same day as me so we made plans to meet up on the ferry and travel together. Initially we had all bought tickets to sit in the main cabin area (think an airplane seat) but a marathon of movies and only floor space to sleep quickly convinced us to spring for a private cabin with four beds. After getting probably the most restful night of sleep I've had in the last few weeks we woke up at sunrise and stood out on the deck where we could see coastal mainland in the distance and a variety of whales and dolphins swimming and breaching around the ship.
Well readers, thanks for making it this far with me! I'm getting into the habit of writing more regularly as I go along so hopefully I'll be able to deliver some more material to you all soon. Very excited to see what the mainland has to offer!