Off the coast of La Paz floating in the Sea of Cortez are two islands: Isla Espíritu Santo and Isla Partida accompanied by an outcropping of rocks too small to really be considered islands.

It is this tiny outcropping of rocks floating in the impossibly blue water near them that made the tour we took worth the $850 pesos each ($65 USD).

Because – baby sea lions.

These rocks are home to the largest California Sea Lion colony in the sea of cortez and because this is Mexico- someone decided boating tourists out to the rocks to swim with them was a fantastic idea.

Koalas are to Australians what Sea Lions are to Northern Californians… Cute, not very exotic and sometimes a total pain in the butt.

Unlike koalas however, sea lions are carnivorous and the idea of bobbing about in the water near hundreds (thousands?) of them seemed really crazy.

Nathaniel with his GoPro strapped to the monopod I gave him was way too eager to hop in (he is from Santa Cruz).

After I slipped (flopped) into the water with him and got my breathing under control (stopped hyperventilating) it ended up being an amazing experience.

The babies are curious and like to come up close and poke people with their noses as they tumble over each other in the water like a litter of puppies and the younger adult females will slide in super close to swimmers and put on a flirtatious show of twisting and twirling. Their ability to accelerate in the water is just incredible.

After swimming with them we lunched on Isla Espíritu Santo and headed back to La Paz.

We hope you enjoyed the video!

(My 5D isn’t too fond of water so the imagery in this post is all because of Nathaniel and the GoPro.)