Visiting Baja California—Amazing Plants

island: Gulf of California

We set off for the Whales and Wildness cruise in the Gulf of California with Lindblad/National Geographic (link.)

From the moment I stepped out of the airport at San José del Cabo at the tip of the Baja California peninsula, the landscape was exotic:

From the van, north of San José del Cabo

The peninsula has a variety of climates, dry to extremely dry, hot to warm, some areas receiving summer rain, some with winter rain, all depending on exactly where you are. I saw only a sampling of it.

If you’ve been to the desert around Phoenix, Arizona, you’ve seen something like it. Deserts in this part of North America are very old. Baja California is in the core of this zone, with the most extreme, oldest desert and consequently with some of the strangest plants.