Beach camping at Los Frailes near Cabo Pulmo, Baja California Sur, Mexico

We're on a very bumpy washboardy road on the way to Cabo Pulmo and Los Frailes, which are arguably some of the world's best snorkeling and diving sites. Hi, we're Mel and Jay. Together with our cat Benny, we're traveling the Baja Peninsula all the way to Cabo and back. This is our adventure where we hike to the top of a hill, buy fish from a local fisherman, and snorkel scuba dive and kayak to see fish, rays, sea lions, and whales. So we found another dumping station at an RV park that we can dump for 100 pesos, which is pretty good. And it was good that we stopped here because as I got our wood out, I realized that we're missing two pieces. We forgot our leveling blocks at the campsite, which is thankfully only about 10 minutes back the way that we came. Kind of sucks, but could be worse. We're starting out this travel day on the right foot. Yeah, right where we left them. You might be thinking, oh, these are just two pieces of wood, but they're kind of essential to our travels. And just like that, the pavement ended. Yeah, we're on the part of the journey that we were kind of dreading. It's a very washboard, bumpy dirt road. We're showing 17 kilometers to our destination and we're currently doing about... Something like that. Google estimates 31 minutes. I estimate at least an hour. All right, so we have 10 kilometers to go, but we've been averaging like not much more than 10 kilometers an hour, so it still could be an hour to go. All right, we are here on Las Freilas. We've scoped out a spot. Okay, that way a bit. I think that's almost perfect. Now let's survey the damage. I can already see the door open a little bit. Okay, and all the cups are all falling over, of course. Well, that was the absolute worst leveling experience we have ever had. We had our blocks down there and they kept shifting, and then I couldn't unhitch the trailer. I had to re-hitch and unhitch three times. Oh my goodness. Finally, we're relatively level and we're unhitched, so now we can unpack and relax a little bit. Good morning! It's the next day and we are up early. We are going snorkeling because look how calm that beautiful water is. And the snorkeling here is supposed to be some of the best snorkeling that we will experience on this trip, so we're going to go find out what is living in that water. Now we've already seen lots of mobula rays jumping. We've even seen whales, but I think there's more to it than that, so let's go have a look. So after we are done swimming and snorkeling and all our water sports in ocean water, we have to rinse our gear in fresh water and that's so that the salt doesn't ruin the materials that they're made of. I've done a lot of thinking of how we would do this on this trip and still be able to conserve water and so we brought a bucket. We turn on the water into the bucket and we just kind of give our stuff a little of a spray and then all of the water off of that accumulates in the bucket and then we can just keep adding to it and soaking our stuff as we go. We've got horses on the beach! It's early morning. Sunrise hasn't even started yet and I'm going to try and buy some fish from the local fishermen so that we can do cooking with Mel tonight. The local fishermen go out at night and then they come back between 4 a.m and 7 a.m. I really really hope I can get We have fish! Red snapper for dinner tonight. Wow look at that! Yeah. Alright, second adventure of the morning. We're gonna go see if we can find some sea lions. What the heck is this coming at us? What is it? What were they? Fish! Oh my gosh! It's all these tiny little fishes. Oh my gosh. So on the suggestion of some of our viewers I put these little rubber things a bit closer to the ends of the paddles and I think it's helping not get as much water down in the boat although it may also be splashing Mel a little bit more. Yeah not loving it. Like a pros and cons kind of thing. My legs are falling asleep so I've had to stretch them out ahead. Oh I saw a school of fish. Little ones. Yeah this would actually be a nice circling spot I think. Do you see them? They're on this rock. Look at the birds on the rock here. We got pelicans, cormorants maybe, or shags, and then we got sea lion rock. Hi friends. Oh they look pretty chill. Hola! Alright, how are we doing? I want them to jump in but they seem pretty happy up on that rock. Yep this one here looks like he has a mohawk. Well that was cool. One just came right under the boat and went right next to Jay. Pretty friendly. Yeah? They can come up to you though. No they don't. Okay they're just like somewhat indifferent. Exactly. Bye friends. This pelican looks like he might take a dive. Oh I see it. Okay there's a turtle in the water here. The water is so clear I can still see Jason underwater following this turtle. That's amazing. You see something? A ray. A spotted ray. I'm leaning left. Holy cow that's a bit rocky. Oh actually not too bad. It did not rock the boat quite as badly as I thought it was going to. So now I regret not getting in with the sea lions. I think I let my fears kind of freak me out. Well maybe on another day. Maybe another day it gets calm again. Here we go. Well that was fun. That's neat. Back we go. Bye. Oh my paddle. This is not going to plan. We are hanging out here on the beach. It's hot as you might be able to tell from my outfit. So this is going to be a quick recipe. It is a fish that is flavored with achiote. You take a box of the achiote. It's a condiment that comes from a tree called the achiote tree. So we're going to break that up and we're going to add a third cup of lime juice. Let's juice up these limes and hope that we get somewhere around a third of a cup. At least we've got our lime squisher. I'd say that's pretty close. Now we're going to take that gorgeous red snapper that I bought this morning and we're going to smother it. I'm just going to kind of slather it on. I'm going to slather the other side and we're just going to cover all the pieces. Now that we have this big gloopy red mess we're going to let it sit for a couple hours before we cook it. We've got our hiking shoes on and so does Nico. the pans heating over a medium high heat. It smells so good. It's like a little bit smoky but a little bit kind of spicy smelling. Covering, covering. I need my ove gloves which were a gift from Jay's parents. Thank you guys. Lots of flavor going on in here. All right and turn down that heat. Ready? No not done. That's pink. Checking again. Yeah that's flaky. Yeah okay. All right we're good. We're done. It smells really good. Here it is carrots, zucchini and chayote. Oh my gosh I love it. It's like community dinner. Your veggies are so nice. The rice is perfect. Good morning. Let's give you a little camp tour. So we are staying on a beach called Los Frijoles and that is approximately 20 minutes away from Cabo Pulmo which is a very famous marine reserve. It's a big arroyo or wash as you might call it. So when in the rainy season water comes down here and tees out into the ocean. But during the dry season like now it's perfectly fine and dry to camp on. We have a couple of amenities here at this spot. Garbage, organics and recycling. And there is a well right there. Hi Hannah. Hannah and Andy. You might have met them in some of our other videos. And we are also joined by our friends Chantal and Ton. There they are in their converted fire truck from Holland. So we are gonna take advantage of all the marine activities that we can do here. There's snorkeling, there is scuba diving over at Cabo Pulmo, kayaking, paddle boarding. There's supposed yesterday. Some of them started to come up like up at me like within a couple of feet. They were like really curious of me. Yeah they were like down below and then they'd like loop off like right next to me. And I was like oh my gosh too close too close. Wow you just like float and then they come to you and it's fantastic. All right it's another beautiful morning up as early as always. And the snorkeling here has been fantastic. And Jay loves snorkeling. I on the other hand absolutely love scuba diving. And so that's what's happening today. Now Jay doesn't actually feel like going because well he thinks it's a bit of a hassle. So I'm bringing along our friend Andy who's also a certified diver. Him and I are gonna go scuba diving and let's see what else is out It was truly like being in an aquarium. Highly recommend it. Cabo Pulmo diving. Do it. So we are starting our last day here on Los Frailes. It has been just the most epic spot we've been to so far. Absolutely our favorite. And this morning Jay decided to go out for a little kayak on the water and I'm just thinking yeah no problem. Off he goes. I make my tea and I come out to uh say hi to Andy and Hannah and they've got the drone up and they tell me that there's a whale next to Jay and they got footage. There they are. They got footage of Jay with this whale. I'm so excited to tell him about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty epic. It's so epic. Anyway that's uh good morning. Bed head. We've all got bed head. The water right now is just so calm and quiet. There's crew. Tell us what you saw. That's pretty close to a whale. Where are you? It's pretty nice. I saw a epic adventure but I've got an epic conference call so I gotta run. Well this has quickly become our probably most favorite stop on the trip so far. We saw whales, mobula rays, sea lions, so many different kinds of fish. We don't really want to leave but we have to. Yeah so next time we are heading towards San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas. It's party time. We'll see you then. Just a quarter tablet. I will. Okay I've got a quarter right there for you. Thank you. Taking drugs before we go. Yeah so next time we're heading towards Cabo San Lucas and wait what's the name of the other one? You're so like anti. You're like that was cool. Move on. Next thing. Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing, and turning on notifications. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.