Two Active Adventure Trips in Baja Under $1,000

Sea Kayak Adventures is offering two trips in Baja this winter that are easy on your pocketbook.  For less than $1,000 per person land-only with hotels and camping, you can paddle a kayak to remote islands in the Sea of Cortez, snorkel in aquamarine waters, and have an once-in-a-lifetime experience going eye-to-eye with a friendly gray whale.  The trips meet in Loreto and details are below.

Trip: Baja Gray Whale Adventure
Length: Three days
Price: $895 per person

Go eye-to-eye with a 30-ton gray whale and its calf as they swim up alongside your boat on the wild western coast of Baja, Mexico.  On Sea Kayak Adventure’s three-day gray whale adventure you’ll spend several hours each day in a motorized skiff getting close to the whales, dolphins, and sea turtles that cruise along the bathwater-warm waterways of Baja California’s renowned Magdalena Bay, home to the highest concentration of nursing gray whales in North America.  Next, you’ll enter a labyrinth of mangrove channels, past cacophonous heron rookeries and mudflats teeming with migrant shorebirds.  Then it’s back on land to trek through the rolling sand dunes – pausing for whalebones, rare seashells, and sea lion colonies – to watch spouting grays as the sun sinks into the Pacific Ocean.  “It’s a magical place,” says Jad Davenport, a travel photographer from Denver and SKA client who compares Mag Bay’s primeval landscape to Namiba’s Skeleton Coast.  At camp, biologist guides dish out tasty chili relleno, margaritas, and educational tidbits on whale natural history.  Nights are spent in comfortable tents on a sandy barrier island, where the hollow sounds of whales breathing lull you to sleep.  The payoff for coming on this trip, says Terry Prichard, the outfitter’s founder, “is a rare glimpse at the longest mammal migration on the planet.”  From January to March, more than 20,000 California gray whales arrive at this remote coast to mate and calve after a 10,000-mile round-trip journey from the icy waters of the Bering Sea.  “Seeing the once-endangered leviathans up close is a humbling experience,” claims Prichard.

Outfitter: Sea Kayak Adventures, 800-616-1943, www.seakayakadventures.com 
When to go: January-March.  Difficulty: Moderate.  The price of $895 per person includes two nights’ hotel in Loreto; two nights camping in Mag Bay; all meals; all camping equipment; guides; and airport transfers.  Airfare is not included.  SKA donates a small portion of your trip cost to wildlife conservation groups in Baja.

Afterward, go snorkeling through brilliant turquoise water in the Bay of Loreto National Marine Park in the Sea of Cortez ($95).  Better yet, the outfitter offers four-day paddling excursions in the Park starting at $975.

Trip: Sea of Cortez Kayaking Quick Adventure
Length: Four days
Price: $995

Sea Kayak Adventures is offering a four-day kayaking trip in Baja’s Sea of Cortez that cost less than a grand including two nights’ hotel in Loreto and three nights’ camping on secluded beaches in Loreto Bay National Marine Park.  The Sea of Cortez has been declared a World Heritage Site and the waters surrounding the Park are a sanctuary for blue-footed boobies, fin and blue whales, dolphins and sea lions.  Participants will paddle sea kayaks below towering volcanic cliffs amid sea caves and rocky reefs, get close to a 50-foot whale, trek cactus-studded arroyos and snorkel in crystal-clear bays.  All activities are led by naturalist guides, who dish out tasty chile rellenos and margaritas in tented beach camps at days end.   A support skiff carries the camp supplies – including ice to keep the drinks cold. 

Weekly departures are scheduled from December 30 through May 3, 2009.  The April 5 departure is slated for families.  No prior kayaking experience is necessary.

For further information or reservations, contact Sea Kayak Adventures Inc at (800) 616-1943 or go to www.seakayakadventures.com.   

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