By Kari Bodnarchuk - an award-winning freelance writer and photographer.
Brought to you by the HoustonChronicle.com January 18, 2008

Sea of Cortés, Mexico — "Dolphins at 2 o'clock," said Melissa, a fellow paddler, and we all glanced over to watch four gray dolphins come splashing by, arcing out of the water, flipping, and slapping their tails playfully on the ocean's surface. A flock of pelicans soon followed, flying single file just inches above the water, riding the air currents on their way stage right.

"OK, cue the whales," joked Rob, another kayaker.

As if in a comedy sketch, whales soon appeared, spouting a misty funnel of spray in the distance, just to the right of the chiseled brown hills at the base of the Sierra Giganta mountains. This scene repeated itself daily as we kayaked around Mexico's Sea of Cortés, though sometimes we spotted a fin whale, rather than a blue whale. Or maybe a great blue heron or osprey stood in for the pelicans.

The day my friend Cathi called to suggest a "girls' getaway," temperatures in New England — where I lived at the time — registered as much as 30 degrees below zero. I was game. She wanted to do something active and outdoorsy, requiring little thought, preparation or extra gear, and preferably a trip she wouldn't do with her kids, ages 2 and 5. I wanted something a little more adventurous, in a spot where temperatures were a good 100 degrees warmer than at home. Baja fit the bill on all counts.

We weren't big on guided or organized trips, but sea kayaking around an unfamiliar area as wonderfully remote as Baja's offshore islands was not an activity we would have tried to do alone.

Seven of us had signed up to spend a week paddling around two uninhabited islands in Bahía de Loreto, a newly established national marine park. This would be a wilderness adventure, we were told — no showers, no civilization (we saw only a few fishermen, two other kayaking groups and a lone tour boat all week), and we would carry a week's worth of supplies in our kayaks.

The outfitter, Sea Kayak Adventures, would provide all camping and kayaking gear, plus guides who, it turned out, could field even our silliest questions and also whip up the most mouthwatering meals — a mix of Mexican and U.S. dishes. We kayakers, in turn, were expected to pitch our tents, wash our dishes, paddle and have fun — quite opposite the high-stress, rigorous pace most of us usually experienced.

The paddlers in our group ranged from 26 to 52 years old and had flown in from St. Louis, Denver, Boston and Wisconsin, as well as Vermont and Oregon. We had a recreational therapist, two writers, a former submarine officer and three "computer people," including Rob, who confessed that despite living at the foot of the Rockies, the closest he gets to nature is looking at a scenic screen saver on his computer. Several of us were experienced kayakers, while others had never paddled before, but there were no prerequisites.

The trip began in Puerto Escondido, half an hour south of Loreto, the oldest settlement in Baja and once the capital of California, when this Spanish-ruled area stretched from Baja to San Francisco. (The town still has a 300-year-old mission to explore.) Loreto lies 600 miles south of the U.S.-Mexican border, and it maintains an easy pace. It has roadside vendors selling silver jewelry, Mexican blankets and other handmade crafts, a few small hotels, one supermarket and several outstanding hole-in-the-wall restaurants. It's less than three hours by air from Houston.

After a safety talk, during which we learned basic paddling and rescue techniques, we set off in our two-person, 21-foot kayaks. Each fiberglass boat weighed about 200 pounds, had specially designed foam-padded seats and adjustable backrests (a big plus after a few hours of paddling), and was named according to its vibrant color: Mary Kay (bright pink), Winterfresh (light green), Piña Colada (a dusty yellow), and so on.

That first day on the water, we kayaked alongside Isla Danzante, where the jade-colored water was so translucent we could see hundreds of sea creatures below us: starfish, orange sea horses, sergeant majors and parrotfish, plus mounds of coral. A few feet offshore, the water turns deep blue and plunges 1,200 feet, making it an ideal spot for a mammal the length of a Boeing 737 to feed the blue whale.

Off the east coast of Baja, Bahía de Loreto national marine park encompasses about 800 miles of coastline and offshore islands, including the two we called home for six days, Isla Danzante and Isla Carmen. This area was formed when tectonic plates split apart, cracking open mountains and severing a part of Mexico from the mainland. This left behind a 1,000-mile-long finger-shaped stretch of land known as Baja California and one of the earth's youngest seas. That was about 25 million years ago. Later, as the area was split open along the San Andreas Fault, intense volcanic activity repeatedly sent lava flow upon lava flow, forming the mountains seen here today.

Jacques Cousteau once called the Sea of Cortés "one of the world's aquariums." It is considered the richest body of water on the planet, biologically speaking, because it has more than 3,000 species of marine life. It's a bird-watcher's paradise, too, and heaven for anyone who needs a stress-free escape or is simply in search of good waterborne adventure.

My compadres and I spent two to five hours on the water each day, paddling by cliffs where white trees (palos blancos) grew out of cracks in the volcanic rock, past valleys full of towering cordon cactus and sage-colored scrub, and around rocky headlands where birds perched on rocks and held out their wings, like a mother's welcoming arms, to let them dry in the sea breeze.

Although the Sea of Cortés can be choppy, we had four days of glassy or just slightly rippled seas, resembling nothing more than a corduroy surface. The calm water helped preserve our strength and also made spotting wildlife easier. As we kayaked along Isla Carmen, past sand and coral beaches, blue-footed boobies and ospreys soared overhead. We spotted a manta ray with a 6-foot wingspan just floating on the surface, a green sea turtle about twice the size of my kitchen sink, dozens of blue and fin whales and three strange logs sticking out of the water. Lino, one of our local Mexican guides, identified these as the head and flippers of a sleeping sea lion (another good reason to go with a guide).

For lunch, we stopped off in wineglass-shaped bays with names like Honeymoon Cove, White Beach and the Aquarium. Here, we snorkeled around angelfish and wrasses, and explored tidal pools where we found hermit crabs the size of a baby's fingernails. Or we walked along rock ledges that lined the shore, occasionally spooking big, scarlet-red crabs that went clicking across the rocks as they scurried away. Some had simpler ideas: "OK, today I'm working on tanning my thighs," someone said, and that's about as ambitious as our goals were by midweek.

At night, we sat on the beach in our camp chairs and rested after a day of paddling. This required dipping tortillas into the ceviche bowl and watching the sun dip and the moon rise simultaneously. Often, there would be a repeat of the day's matinee: pelicans skimming the surface, dolphins swimming past and the occasional, familiar poofing sound of a whale in the distance.

Those of us with extra energy played Frisbee, while others went for a walk. And some took advantage of the on-board library: In a red dry bag, our guides had packed books on whales, birds and area history.

A natural bonding goes on after the sun sets, the "tequila sunrise" comes out and seven strangers and their guides sit on a beach, staring at lunch bags filled with white sand and burning candles (our pseudo campfire, since fires were recently banned in the marine park), and talk about everything from geology to relationships to pedicures. Then the evening's real entertainment began: name games, brainteasers and a much funnier and wackier version of charades.

Several of us slept in spacious MSR tents on the beach. We were given three-person tents for doubles and two-person tents for singles, meaning we had plenty of room to spread out. Others, however, chose to fall asleep under the shooting stars and bright moon, spreading their tarps on the sand and their sleeping mats and sleeping bags on top. With temperatures in the 40s or 50s at night, my beach-sleeping compadres did don fleece hats and jackets.

By the end of the week, we'd shared adventures, secrets and lots of laughs, kept talk of work to a minimum and enjoyed the simplicity of living in the outdoors for a week with nothing more than the gear we could stash in our kayaks.

Cathi and I fully thawed out from the subzero New England temperatures, Rob captured dozens of photos for his new screen savers, and we were all recharged and ready to get back to kids, jobs and cold-weather lifestyles.

After six days on the water, covering about 37 nautical miles, we returned to Puerto Escondido, the sheltered takeout where a van would be waiting to whisk us back to civilization. As we paddled the last few miles from Isla Danzante to the mainland, a pod of more than three dozen dolphins crossed our path and put on a final show, flipping, leaping and slapping their tails on the water's surface, while pelicans flew overhead waiting to scoop up morsels of fish stirred up and left behind by the feeding dolphins.