Mexico: Whales of Baja & Teotihuacán

The idea

Two halves. First Mexico City, where you get up at 04:30 and watch the sun come up over Teotihuacán from a hot-air balloon — a city of maybe 125,000 people that was already abandoned and nameless when the Aztecs found it and decided gods must have built it.

Then Baja California: a thousand kilometres of cactus desert with the Sea of Cortez on one side. Long drives, empty road, turquoise bays that appear out of nothing, and fish tacos on the sand. This is a road trip, and the driving is part of it.

Why late February

The timing is the whole point. Gray whales come into Laguna Ojo de Liebre to calve, and late February is the peak — the calves are weeks old, curious, and come to the pangas. That lagoon is where Charles Scammon took his ships in December 1857 and started a slaughter that ran until there was nothing left to hunt by 1873. It is now a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and their descendants swim over to be scratched. Make of that what you will.

Blue whales are the other one — up to 30 m, the largest animal that has ever existed — and their Loreto season opens in mid-February. These dates sit inside both windows, which is a narrower overlap than it sounds.

What you should know going in

• This is the easy one. Boats, short walks, swimming, and long desert drives. No climbing and no altitude.
• Expect roughly 19 hours of driving across the week, in stretches of four to five hours. Baja is enormous and the good things are spread along it.
• Wildlife is wildlife. February is the best month of the year for both species and the odds are excellent, but nobody can guarantee an animal.
• Group capped at 12, shared double rooms, single supplement on request.

What's still moving

We publish trips while we're still building them, because the people who come on them usually have opinions worth hearing. The dates and route are fixed. Pricing is not final — the figure here is close.

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