SKA Blog

Baja kayakers are fortunate to have direct flights to the town of Loreto, the gem off of Baja’s East coast on the Sea of Cortez. The Islands of Loreto Bay are protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Marine Park, and offer endless picturesque coastline for kayaking, camping, hiking and snorkeling. In past years, flights were limited to a single carrier just 4 days a week, but as the beauty of Loreto entices greater numbers of travelers, a new airline is expanding coverage to this sunny destination. Cal Jet Air will fly from LAX to Loreto each Saturday. With set and seemingly reasonable prices for this flight, Cal Jet Air has opened up many possibilities for would-be kayakers who may have been put-off by high prices on peak dates.

Alaska Air has also increased their service to offer Saturday flights to Loreto as well, making this seaside kayak paradise even more accessible.

Sea Kayak Adventures now offers new dates for our Holiday Kayak Tours to coincide with the Saturday flights:

• December 22-29, 2012 - 8-day Motorboat Supported Tour $1345/person
  
• December 29-Jan 5, 2013 - 8-day Motorboat Supported Tour $1345/person

BOOK NOW to reserve these low rates on airfare and to secure your Early Bird Special on our Baja kayak tours!

Happy Valentine's Day from SKA!

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and we have a number of special offers available to celebrate including our "Countdown to 20 Years" special: book ANY Baja or BC tour by Valentine's Day to receive a box of handmade chocolates and a bottle of champagne on your tour! We also have Early Bird Incentives!

News from the field: Baja High Season

Our gray whale/Sea of Cortez combo season is in full swing in Loreto, Baja California Sur, with sunny skies and happy guests. Gray whales are calving and congregating in Magdalena Bay with record numbers migrating down the Pacific Coast from their Alaskan home seas. Due to some cancellations, we have a handful of spaces still available on Feb 26-Mar 4 and March 4-11, 2012 combo tours. This is THE best time and place to see gray whales.

The city of Loreto is being considered for "Magic Town" designation by the Mexican Federal Ministry of Tourism. This designation indicates a place of national and international significance due to the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. Loreto Bay is already a national park and the islands are preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site - what a special place!  Join us for warm sea kayak getaways in March and April in the Sea of Cortez, or our classic Loreto area paddle to circumnavigate Isla Carmen.

Sea Kayak Adventures visits many world-class locations on our kayak and whale watching tours.  Each year, as excited guests arrange the details of their trips, we receive the same question over and over: "How do I get there?" We do our best to provide up to date information about flights, buses, and other methods of transport.  While we are so fortunate that Loreto, where we kayak on our Baja tours, is easily-accessible by regular transit (no need to travel for 2-3 days to get there!), flights sell out quickly in advance of our tours.

We stumbled upon this link with some helpful tips for savvy travelers who seek ways to find inexpensive airfare: Top 10 Tips for Finding Low Airfare

Sea Kayak Adventures office staff member and first time kayaker Amber Crane recently returned from a tour in Baja (Oct 30-Nov 4, 2011).  She will chronicle her adventures in a new blog series:

Voyage of a Novice Kayaker

Part 3: Isn't it time you talked about the actual trip?

My Baja kayak trip began with a 2:00am alarm to catch a 5:00am flight that would deposit me at LAX in time for the only flight to Loreto on Sunday, October 30, 2011.  Upon Sea Kayak Adventures’ recommendation, I took only a carry-on bag with my clothing and thus whisked through my connections without the concern of relinquishing my carefully-packed duffel to the vortex of lost airport luggage.

Red-eyed but energized, I plopped into my window seat for the LAX to LTO flight and watched, awestruck, as the scenery below blurred from chaotic Los Angeles to vivacious Tijuana to coarse desert.  Scrub and brush melted into flowing sand from which mountain peaks crawled to the sky, hues of red and tan bursting against the azure sea.  The deep turquoise of the ocean was interrupted where cream-colored sand flowed down from the mountain peaks to form a beach. In these picturesque places, the ocean appeared as a bright, shocking aqua, as if someone had poured a pool of blue highlighter fluid over the water. I could only marvel over nature’s surreal palette.

Our guests on our Dec 4-9, 2011 yoga kayak tour in Loreto Bay National Marine Park had the time of their lives! Yoga on the beach as the sun rose and set each day, kayaking and snorkeling in turquoise waters, hiking, watching frolicking dolphins!

We do still have a few spots on our YOGA GRAY WHALE CAMP Feb 10-14, 2012 - yoga, sand dunes, gray whale moms & babies - join us!

If you are considering a kayaking and/or gray whale tour in sunny Baja, give us a call for friendly advice about the best trip itinerary or location to meet your needs.  We are happy to answer all of your questions, and please feel free to give us a call at 1-800-616-1943 directly - we're always eager to chat about all things Baja!

1.  Do you and your staff run the trip, or do you contract with another company?
We own the permits and operate the tours ourselves. Co-owners Terry Prichard and Nancy Mertz started as guides in the Baja area in the 80s, and are still very much in love with the area. One or both spend much of the season at their home base of operations in Loreto.

2.  What is the minimum/maximum number of people you take on each trip?  What is your participant to guide ratio?
We have the highest (that we know of) guide-to-guest ratio in the area, with a guide per every 3-4 guests.    We have a minimum of 6 guests and a maximum of 13.  Most of our trips have 3 guides on them, so that two can be preparing food while one is leading a hike, helping snorkelers, or giving a nature talk.

Sea Kayak Adventures office staff member and first time kayaker Amber Crane just returned from a tour in Baja (Oct 30-Nov 4, 2011).  She will chronicle her adventures in a new blog series:

Voyage of a Novice Kayaker

Part 1: Wait, what do you mean by ‘sea kayak?’

Kayak? On the ocean?  Like, where the big fish live?

I confess, when I first joined the office staff at Sea Kayak Adventures this past August and received the generous opportunity to join a trip this fall to Baja, my first thoughts were not of starlit sand or diving dolphins. 26 years of media influence and land-locked living ensured I possessed a healthy caution of open waters and the untamed inhabitants therein.  Consequently, the thought of strapping myself into a sliver of fiberglass and hovering like a delectable hors d'oeuvre above hundreds of feet of water containing what I could only assume would be a swirling mass of “things-that-might-eat-me” seemed, quite simply, impractical.

That SKA owners Terry Prichard and Nancy Mertz have led kayak expeditions in the Sea of Cortez for over 25 years (and operated their business there with thousands of guests since 1993) without anyone swallowed by a whale (most of which, I later learned, are of the peaceful baleen variety) didn’t soothe the stirrings of my survival instinct. As much as I aimed for intellectual suppression of my irrational fears, I remained committed the administrative end of the Baja sunshine: from the safety of my computer screen with my feet firmly on solid ground.

And then I saw the pictures.

UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, founded 16 November, 1945. In pursuit of their mission, UNESCO designated 936 areas worldwide as places possessed of significant cultural or natural heritage for preservation for future generations. These sites receive funding and expert advice for preservation efforts from UNESCO, which has deemed them to have "outstanding universal value to humanity."

UNESCO World Heritage Sites & Sea Kayak Adventures

We operate kayaking/whale watching tours in two of only 32 UNESCO "Natural" World Heritage Sites in all Latin and South America. These areas are Loreto Bay National Marine Park (part of the Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California UNESCO World Heritage site) in southern Baja California, Mexico and Patagonia's Peninsula Valdes World Heritage Site in Argentina.  We also operate tours in British Columbia, Canada's Johnstone Strait, home to Robson Bight Ecological Preserve, which, while not a UNESCO site, remains the world's only orca preserve. 

Loreto Bay became a national marine park in July, 1996, first by presidential decree then confirmed by the national congress of Mexico.  Loreto Bay then became part of the UNESCO World Heritage site July 2005; a culmination of concerned local citizens' efforts and Mexico's diligent actions to preserve important national natural sites.  This World Heritage site is home to 891 fish species, including 90 endemic fishes.  A third of the world's cetacean species are found in the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez.  According to UNESCO, this site is home to 695 vascular plant species, more than in any marine and insular property on the World Heritage List.  In addition to the biodiversity and wildlife value of the region, fishing for sustenance and for sport and eco-tourism such as sea kayaking, snorkeling, SCUBA diving and whale watching are widely popular, and greatly contribute to the culture and the economy that sustains the citizenry of Loreto.

Península Valdés UNESCO World Heritage site in the Patagonia area of Argentina is "a site of global significance for the conservation of marine mammals", according to UNESCO.  Peninsula Valdes also hosts the breeding grounds for critical populations of elephant seals, endangered southern right whales, southern sea lions, and sea birds. Sea Kayak Adventures guests may encounter Armadillos, ostrich-like rheas, maras (Patagonian hares) and llama-like guanacos that roam the sweeping landscape. Click here to view a photo gallery for this trip. http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-0262-aca0-6b07

Read more about the process of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the history of UNESCO's preservation efforts:

UNESCO World Heritage FAQ

History of World Heritage Sites

An interesting side note - countries must uphold the strict preservation standards of UNESCO to avoid being delisted.

In view of headlines about violence along the U.S. border, many people are wondering about the safety of visiting Mexico. Keep in mind that Mexico is a big and diverse country, so violence along the U.S. border towns won't have any effect on your vacation in Loreto any more than violence in Miami would affect people in Chicago. Most of the violence that has taken place recently is due to conflicts between drug cartels and the Mexican authorities in just four cities and there's no reason to condemn the rest of the country, especially Loreto and the surrounding state of Baja California Sur.

Article by Brad Nahill, Director of SEE Turtles

It seems that every day another news article comes out about animals facing extinction. The list of reasons is seemingly endless including loss of habitat, the wildlife trade, and climate change. What the media rarely covers is the stories of hope, where communities come together to protect the animals that live around them.  There are many of these stories around the world, where dedicated conservationists are coming up with innovative ways to help these endangered species recover while improving the lives of local residents. Many of these programs include volunteer activities for travelers to participate in research and conservation programs.

Here are just a few of the opportunities for travelers to help wildlife:

Green Sea Turtles in Baja: Years ago, many turtle researchers wrote off Baja’s turtles as beyond saving. However, an award-winning network of fishermen, scientists, and local residents called the Grupo Tortuguero formed to study and protect the region’s five species of sea turtles and numbers are rebounding. A new locally run business called RED Sustainable Tourism is helping these conservationists recruit volunteer help for their turtle research. Participants camp on a small island in Magdalena Bay and help to set nets to catch green turtles at sea and collect information on them before returning them to the water. Sea Kayak Adventures is partnering with RED Sustainable Tourism to offer an exciting Conservation Adventure package along the Baja Peninsula, Mexico in March 2012. Join us for the trip of a lifetime while directly supporting community-based conservation of endangered green sea turtles.

Read more about the other four wild animals.

Baja Sea Turtle photo by Elizabeth Moreno.