La Paz, located in Baja Mexico on the edge of the Sea of Cortez has such natural beauty that makes it the perfect setting for a relaxing vacation. La Paz
provides a romantic atmosphere with the perfect blend of quaint, small town
Mexican charm and offers comfortable, modern and reasonably priced services.
In planning our trip to Baja, Lorraine and I selected three towns as destinations for adventure. Cabo San lucas, Loreto and La Paz offered a nice
diversity of scenery and activities.
We stayed at the La Concha Beach resort, which is located just 5 minutes
outside the wonderful town of La Paz and is set on a secluded beach along La Paz
Bay.
A well known spot for visitors to eat, relax and meeting some of the locals is
The Malecon, a sidewalk that follows the waterfront for several miles. The Malecon is also a popular place for the young crowd of La paz to meet and have fun. Evening walks in the Malecon offers a perfect view of the sunset. Other activities
in La Paz include fishing, diving snorkeling, mountain biking, sea kayaking, whale
watching and also SWIMMING WITH SEA LIONS.

We made the reservations for this extraordinary adventure at the hotel lobby.
The next day our group met out by the dock right after breakfast and we were off
on a fascinating day trip into the wonderful world of the Sea of Cortez.

The Sea of Cortez is home for countless species of marine plants and animals,
forming such a unique ecosystem that it was baptized by Jacques Cousteau as “The
Aquarium of the World.” Dotted with undersea mountains and canyons, the Sea of Cortez circulates huge amounts of nutrient enriched water, producing seasonally
heavy plankton blooms which in turn contribute to the massive diversity of tropical
and pelagic fish found throughout its waters.
The motor boat trip was a most enjoyable one hour that one can spend on the water. The day was sunny, the sea air refreshing and along the way we spotted
some of the wildlife that inhabits the Sea of Cortez. Large rays were spotted several times and a few whales too. This put everyone on board into the mood to see more
creatures up close and personal. That was about to happen as we approached Los

Islotes, a massive red rock formation that juts straight up out of the cobalt, blue water. The tip and cliffs of the rock are splattered and plastered white with years of accumulated bird dung. It is here that colonies of birds and Sea Lions share this isolated and protected refuge and we were about to join them.

Our boat captain manuevered the small craft close to the rocks and this made photos pretty easy. When shooting from a moving boat, my main concern was shutter speed. Since we were very close to shore, good images were made with the
24mm – 70mm lens, sometimes set around 24 for large groups. The meter was set
for matrix metering since most of the colors (blue water, red rock and brown subjects) were “medium” toned and the matrix performed perfectly. With bright,

sunny skies and a 100 ISO slide film, my shutter speed indicator showed a 250 most
of the time. This made me confident that even in the slow moving boat I would
be able to freeze the action. I used a polarizing filter on some of the shots to bring out the colors of the water and remove some of the reflections of light. The use of
the polarizer does cut down on the light, which then reduced the shutter speed, so
this was taken into consideration. I switched to shutter priority when using the polarizer, so that I set the shutter to a 250 and then let the camera figure out the f stop.
We made two complete revolutions around the huge rock formation and there

were a few more boats with people already snorkeling around the sea lions. Our
captain found a good spot, anchored the boat and our “crew” was ready. I busied myself with getting as many shots of the sea lions on the rocks. Our captain was nice enough to anchor the boat in such a

manner that the light was over my shoulder for good photos. In this case back-lighting would have been terrible.
Lorraine jumped right in with the rest of our group and they made their way

about 50 feet toward the rocks. The water was cold. This was March and the waters of the Sea of Cortez have not warmed as yet and to really enjoy this, a diver
should have a dive suit. There was one such fellow, who was by himself in a red kayak. He had a long

length of rope tied to the kayak and the other end to his leg.
When he dove in and down to the depth where the sea lions were cavorting it was
obvious which direction he was diving as the kayak followed him around.
I’m not much of a swimmer and cold water is not much of an enticement so I
opted to document the activity from the boat. Lorraine swam around having the
experience of sea lion pups nibbling at fins and snorkel. Other, larger sea lions
would make circles around the swimmers and make playful advances. After about
20 minutes in the water our “chilled out” crew came back on board. The hot sun
was happily absorbed by all who braved the chill.

The sea lions came out to the boat and swam only a few feet away giving me the

opportunity to shoot some extreme close-ups with a wide angle lens. After all of us were satisfied with our sea lion adventure, the captain headed away from Los Islotes
to another remote island. We anchored right off shore on a pristine, secluded beach for a lunch picnic.

Here we all soaked up the suns rays, ate lunch and snorkeled in much warmer, shallow water. My cup of tea.

I became so absorbed in making pictures that I never noticed we had visitors
to our picnic lunch. I had left a sandwich open on the beach, had grabbed my camera to make some

pictures out in the water. Some of our people yelled to me
and I turned to watch my sandwich flying off down the beach by some observant
sea gulls. We weren’t completely alone on “our island.”

The one hour ride back to La Concha Beach was just as exhilarating as the ride
out. The sea lion experience is one of those “eco” adventures that will last a lifetime
of memories. If you are ever in Baja, try La Paz as a destination and Swim with
the Sea Lions.