BAJA

BAJA CALIFORNIA, SEA OF CORTEZ, MEXICO

The Baja Peninsula stretches nearly 800 miles from the US border south to Land's End at Cabo San Lucas. Between the peninsula and mainland Mexico lies the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortez, one of the most productive seas on earth.

Baja is the best place in the world to see whales and dolphins, including giant blue whales, fin whales, humpbacks, sperm whales and super-pods of common dolphins.

This is also where the Sonoran Desert meets the sea – home to a large number of endemic species, found nowhere else on the planet, like the legendary boojum tree.

And there are whale sharks, the largest fish on earth, ironically eating plankton, the smallest food resource in the oceans.

Like pearls strung along it's shores, the islands in the Gulf are designated as a World Heritage Site and are proteced by a growing network of national parks and biosphere reserves.


© Ralph Lee Hopkins