Kayaking in Mexico

The only light came from a crescent moon and an uncountable number of stars in the jet-black sky. Cicadas chirruped, the air was warm, and so too was the sand I lolloped on, just feet away from the breaking waves.
I’d had a dinner of chicken and rice, played a dice game and chatted with a couple from New York. It felt like 1am and time to head for my tent, but in fact it was not even eight o’clock.

"Out here, we call 8pm ‘Baja midnight’," said Bernado, our guide, in a matter-of-fact way. "Most people are in bed by 7.30."

"Baja" is Baja California, the long, dangly bit on Mexico’s west coast. Towards the southern tip, a half hour’s boat ride from the city of La Paz, Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida are two islands perfect for sea-kayaking around, and I was spending a week doing just that with 11 others.

In the Sea of Cortez that laps the eastern side of the peninsula, the waters are warm, calm and filled with all sorts of fascinating creatures, from tuna and turtles to manta rays and whales, the beaches are the stuff of chocolate-advert dreams, and there’s starkly barren scenery that would make a spaghetti-western director weep. Tall, muddy-red volcanic cliffs and hills are strewn with boulders and dappled with forests of nine-metre-high cacti. Hundreds of pelicans laze on rocks or cruise on air currents, every so often dive-bombing fish that venture too close to the surface.

La Paz, a two-hour flight south from Los Angeles, makes a pleasant introduction to Mexico. In the evenings, families and courting couples promenade on the five-kilometre (three-mile) Malecón, the city’s seafront. In the centre of town, people sit on benches and watch the world go by in Plaza Constitución, by the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Paz, while stalls selling cheap snacks do a roaring trade as thermometers nudge 30C.

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