Adventure Unknown

For the last 2 weeks of our trip, we headed back up north to Mexico, where we would spend a few days in Puerto Vallarta, followed by 10 days in Baja California and finally a few days back in Mexico City from where we would fly back to Vienna.

Puerto Vallarta

We got to Puerto Vallarta and were excited to see if the western part of Mexico can compete with other parts of the country we had already seen earlier on the trip.

The city felt very touristic, maybe even more so than the east coast around Cancun. We spent a fair bit of time during the first 2 days just walking around, determined to find authentic food.

Initially, we planned to do an organised day trip from Puerto Vallarta to the Marietas Islands and the famous La Playa del Amor (aka Hidden Beach) . However, we ditched that plan after hearing that there was only a very limited amount of people allowed on the beach each day and that tickets cost well above $100. So on the third day, we embarked on a mission to take public buses to Punta Mita and organise one of the many pangas (small boats) to go out there. Access to then Hidden Beach was not allowed that way but we were happy to just see the islands and maybe even get lucky and spot a whale or two – which we did! After some haggling, which we were getting quite good at, we managed to get great price for a 3 hours trip which included a couple of snorkeling stops.

On our last day in Puerto Vallarta, we just relaxed on the beach and watched a pod of humpback whales feed in the bay all day.

Baja California

Whilst researching this trip, we found out that January and February are the best months to spot various whales and even swim with whale sharks around the Baja California peninsula. So we rented a hire car and drove around the southern part of the peninsula to spend a few nights at a few different spots.

Our first stop was La Paz, where we were hoping to swim with the largest fish in the world, the whale shark. Due to strong winds, we couldn’t go out on the small boat on the first day, so we drove around the area to a couple beaches with 2 people we met at the hostel. On the second day, we went on the half day tour to swim with whale sharks. We were very lucky to be the only people on the boat that day (normally there are up to 10 people in a boat), which meant that the guide could give his full attention to us. After about half an hour of trying, we finally managed to find a whale shark and jumped in the water. We ended up going in the water 4 times for about 10 minutes each time to swim alongside these magnificent animals. There were 2 different whale sharks around our boat (the bigger one being around 10m long)

After this fantastic experience, we headed north to Loreto in the hope to see some blue whales. We kept our hopes low, knowing that blue whales are actually an endangered species and quite rare to spot. The steep prices of the tours made us question if we should even do it, considering that we might spend hours on the water not seeing anything but waves (despite all of the operators tell us that we’re almost guaranteed to see a blue whale). We went along and booked the tour for the next day and boy were we glad that we did it! We saw a few dozen blue whales and a fin whale. Most of them were quite far away but we saw some as close as 20-30m away from the boat. It was a fantastic day and we were glad that we decided to fork out the money to see the largest animal on the planet up close!

From Loreto, we headed towards the west coast. We drove the “scenic” route via San Javier, where we looked at one of the oldest Spanish missions in Mexico and a 300-year-old olive tree. We then continued taking a road that Google Maps made look better than it actually was. At that point, we were very happy that we got an upgrade to a mini SUV when we picked up the car! The scenery and massive cacti along the way were definitely worth the increased heart rate when crossing creeks and driving along the unpaved roads in the middle of nowhere (we literally did not see a single person or car in over 2 hours!)

In San Carlos, we were planning on doing a day tour to see (and hopefully pet) grey whales. We were keeping our hopes low again, thinking that we were already very lucky with the whale sharks and blue whales, and also being told that it was a very quiet year in terms of how many grey whales were actually in the bay. We organised the tour through the owner of the hotel and headed out early in the morning. After a quick stop at bird island (we had never seen that many birds in one spot before!), it didn’t take long until we saw the first whales up close. Over the next few hours saw well over 100 grey whales, many of which were coming up to the boat to have a good look at us. We even saw quite a few mating rituals, which interestingly require 2 males and 1 female. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to pet a whale as there weren’t any young ones around and they are usually the ones coming to the boats for pets. However, we thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many whales roaming around and coming up close to the boats – so close that one of them even hit the boat whilst we weren’t moving, almost knocking us into the water!

We were initially a bit worried that all these tours would be run unprofessionally or that captains and tour guides would not respect the animals, either by chasing or maybe even baiting them. We were very happy to see that most of the areas where the whales can be seen are actually natural reserved or national parks, and that the amount of boats at any given time is very restricted and also heavily enforced (which we got to witness multiple times). None of our captains / guides ever chased a whale, but instead we would hover in an area and wait for whales to approach us – or not if they didn’t want to.

A video with a few highlights of our time in Baja California Sur can be found here:

Mexico City

Over 4 months after we started our time in Central America in Mexico City, it was time to return for a last few days. We didn’t make any plans but instead just wanted to enjoy as much of the delicious food as possible and wander around the areas we enjoyed most when we were there the first time.

Unfortunately, this marked the end of our trip – we wish we could have travelled for another 6 months as we enjoyed (almost) every part of it, loved seeing the different cultures and tasting all the different foods and drinks. The next adventure is sure to come though!

Thanks for following us throughout our journey!