Travel takes you to amazing places but it also runs over special days, such as Christmas which we recently enjoyed in Mulege, and now Julie’s birthday.  We woke up on Ligui Beach in Loreto Bay National Park on Julie’s special day and I promised her a gorgeous sunrise over the ocean, a long beautiful drive across the desert, a hotel in the large town of La Paz and margaritas before a seafood dinner on the waterfront under a warm star-studded sky.  And that’s exactly what I delivered.

La Paz is tucked away in the Bahia de La Paz, a thriving town of about 250,000 with a popular malecon, or esplanade, along the waterfront.  From here you can stay in all standards of hotels, enjoy numerous trendy bars and dine out in great seafood restaurants, all with views over the harbour and boats bobbing in the water.  We enjoyed a great night on the town, a real treat for us, margaritas, cervezas, seafood dinner, a walk along the waterfront, the winter air feeling more like summer.

The next day we decided to break the piggy bank and splurge on a boat trip out to Espiritu Santo, one of the must see items for visitors to this part of Baja.  Espiritu Santo is a UNESCO World Heritage string of mountainous islands off the coast which feature great secluded beaches, dramatic rocky coastlines and high cliffs with colourful layers of strata running through them.  Our target was to snorkel with sea lions and have lunch on a private beach.  That sounded pretty good.

The reality was a little different, although we still had a great day.  Our tiny little runabout boat didn’t have enough life jackets at first for its 11 passengers and we later learned it didn’t have enough snorkelling gear either.  The sun never really came out, making it a fairly chilly day on the open water and the gasoline fumes were less than pleasant.  The two hour boat ride out to the sea lions was a long, cold and bumpy trip but we did pass the stunning Espiritu Santo islands.

We eventually made the last set of islets in the chain which the barking sea lions called home.  The rocks were white from bird poop and the water was bracingly cold but I jumped in to say hello to our hosts.  I was surprised to find a good selection of colourful fish below me, including a thick school of tiny little silvery things that swam closely packed together but magically made way for me as I swam by.

The sea lions were happy to allow us into their playground, one swimming to within about 50 feet (15M) from me.  There were probably 50 to 70 people in the water at that time, all bobbing for sea lions while the pelicans were dive bombing amongst us to catch fish that were below us.  Overall, a unique and special experience.

We stopped at one of the long beaches for a lunch of Mexican ceviches and tostados but it was too chilly to swim or snorkel again so we piled back into our little boat and tooted back to La Paz.  By then it was almost dark and we checked in to a nearby RV Park near the marina for an easy end to a good day.

Our plan over the next few days was to drive the popular loop around the southern tip of the peninsula and visit some of the more touristy areas.  Most visitors to the southern end of Baja fly into La Paz or the more famous Cabo San Lucas and spend a week or two, or as many snowbirds do – six months in their private condo.  Here the cost of living is lower, the weather is always good, the infrastructure is superb and the locals are very friendly.  Cabo in particular is the place to be.

First stop on the tourist trail was Todos Santos, set on the ocean side of the peninsula and less famous than other spots.  We enjoyed a couple hours wandering around the historic centre of town but it was completely sanitised and commercialised for visitors, of which most were Mexicans visiting from other parts of the country.  The souvenir shops all have the same ceramics, T-shirts, clothes, paintings and traditional dolls.  We then headed down to the deserted beach for a picnic lunch amongst the sand dunes, much more our style.

I have been to Cabo San Lucas, or just plain Cabo as all Americans know it by, as a young teenager with my family and actually caught a marlin off the coast.  That holiday was one of the family favourites but since then Cabo has grown up to be somewhat of a monster with many condo high rises along the coast and high end gated communities at every turn.

To support all these visitors there is an expansive downtown area around the glitzy marina with narrow streets sporting hundreds, if not thousands, of tourist shops, hotels, restaurants and bars. There was plenty of colour and movement in all directions, a bit crowded and chaotic, the whole scene somewhat overwhelming for us.  We had an important tech issue which we needed to solve and after that headed to Playa Santa Maria, a beautiful beach about 10 kilometres out of town, and camped in their secure car park.  It wasn’t elegant or romantic but it comfortably sufficed.

The next day we went back into Cabo on a hot and sunny day and walked along the amazing marina, gobsmacked at the enormous yachts that lay shoulder to shoulder throughout the large marina.  There’s big money in Cabo.  We strolled the promenade, did some shopping, gawked at the huge hotels and the glamour of it all, had lunch and generally took in this extraordinary scene of excess.  Holidaying Mexicans mingled with North Americans in equal numbers, most of them overweight and sunburned.  It wasn’t our scene but we enjoyed the spectacle.

We drove back past all the perfectly manicured gardens and huge gated communities to Playa Santa Maria where we had camped the night before to have a swim on their beautiful beach before heading up the coast and finding a glorious little spot on the water to camp for New Year’s Eve.  With a clear sky and a moon one day short of being full we enjoyed the sound of the surf and raised our glasses to the end of an amazing year for us.

For us 2017 was a turning point, our first year of retirement, the start of our much anticipated Follow the Sun journey and the arrival of our granddaughter Abby.  Life couldn’t be better.  Yes, we had a huge loss in our family and that was hard, but we also came to acknowledge the unalterable cycle of life and gained a better appreciation of our own privileged position.