Get Lost: 02 Las Gaviotas, Baja California

In 1940, John Steinbeck ventured on a marine collecting expedition to Baja California, a peninsula off Mexico's west coast; he found more signs of life in the tidal pools than on land. His "Log from the Sea of Cortez" speaks of an ocean's edge inhabited by crabs, prickly urchins, and white periwinkles. Borrowing a fisherman's term, Steinbeck called this patch of the Pacific "tuna water—life water." He wasn't kidding. The first time our creative director visited the peninsula was when she was 11; she watched the ocean and sky meet at lands end in Cabo San Lucas, the sunset blending both at the horizon going from blue to purple to pink, she was hooked too!

Baja has changed in many ways over the last 25 years and yet at the same time it's still the same frontier and open landscape of the past....It still remains largely undeveloped, except for the desert peninsula's tip, where Los Cabos (the Capes) is booming. The nomadic surfers from SoCal and Hawaii love the long barrels, cheap combo platters, and even cheaper digs at casual trailer parks, campsites and open desert up and down the coast.

We weren't camping on this trip but instead in a house with six friends for five days over the New Year's holiday in Las Gaviotas, Baja Norte. Margaritas on repeat (thanks to the Schantz Ranch lime resource & Lara who wouldn't stop making them), sunny days paddling or surfing, rainy day shenanigans, lobstah in Puerto Nuevo, big jesus, mexican karaoke at Charly's Place, off roading at the sand dunes, sunsets and friends!! Check out a few images below in the gallery from this year's trip....