La Paz

No, not that one, we haven’t suddenly fled Mexico and gone to Bolivia! In fact we have only travelled a couple of hours north from San Jose Del Cabo to a small city situated on the Sea of Cortez, complete with pockets of sand, clear turquoise water, pelicans and a nice promenade. At night the promenade comes alive with people of all ages on forms of transport with any number of wheels – from grannies on tricycles, teenagers on roller blades, kids on skateboards and everyone else on bicycles it becomes a dangerous place to walk but an entertaining place to watch out of control people on wheels. If you are not watching people on wheels you can spend time watching people on stage as there seemed to be something going on every night along the front, this did range from local musicians playing traditional music, teenagers rapping in Spanish, dance troops performing Azteca ritual dances and someone doing an Irish jig… a little random! We joined in the wheeled theme and hired bikes for the day and cycled out along the coast, we explored 20km of rugged, dusty hills rolling down with only cacti growing before hitting the coast where more turquoise water lapped gently. We stopped for a picnic lunch at a quiet little bay before jumping back on the bikes to head back to town…as we rode off it was noticable that either Shona has eaten way too much for lunch or she’s got a flat tyre!! So using her bestest Spanish Shona appealled for help from any nearby local and we managed to get a pump from someone. So fully inflated we pedalled off as quick as we could 20km away from town and hoping that her tyre would be ok – it was, we made it back in record time. The following day we took a boat ride out to Espiritu Santo island, a stunning island just off the coast. We cruised the water around the island on the look out for wildlife – most of which seemed to be mid migration or recently left! We did however come across a pod of spinner dolphins who weren’t exactly in a playful mood, saw the odd Marlin, some manta rays and a huge coloney of sealions being very vocal and a tad smelly! Having checked them out for a while from the boat it was time to get in the water, hoping that the grumpy huge bull sealion making loads of noise on a rock wasn’t getting too territorial about us being there. We jumped off the boat (well Shona nervously climbed down worried about the cold water!) and started snorkelling around the island. It wasn’t long before an inquisitive sealion checked us out, darting out of the dark water and up to within inches of us before disappearing again, like mini torpedo’s they come and go as quick as you can say – well saying anything with a snorkel in your mouth isn’t easy but you know what I mean! One took a bit of a shine to Shona and seemed to be following her around for a while, not sure if the sealion got bored or Shona got scared but they soon parted company. We got back on the boat and headed for a secluded bay for a spot of lunch before returning to the mainland having had a cool day and Shona having made a fishy friend. The following day we were back on a boat, this time though heading from the peninsula over to the mainland across the stunning Sea of Cortez. We set sail on a 6 hour voyage around mid afternoon and sat back and watched the world go by, lorry drivers getting drunk and listening to karaoke…it was all rather weird but kinda funny.