La Paz 2025 – Day 1 & 2

Tl;Dr: Great trip, La Paz is Big, Don’t miss Balandera

We started planning this trip last year, realizing that near the end of Winter we need a little Sun. An unexpected trip to Vienna means we have done more travelling this year than normal, felt a little strange to be getting on the plane again so soon.

We flew to Cabo San Lucas, the main airport in Baja California South (the state La Paz is the Capitol of), and rented a car. The drive up to La Paz took about 2.5 hours, we stopped briefly in Todos Santos (about half way through our trip). The driving was pretty straight forward.

Arriving in La Paz took a long time – the city is quite large. I thought we were in the suburbs, but really we were just driving through the somewhat sprawly Capitol of the state. As we got closer to our place I started to get a little concerned – the area seemed quite industrial, not super quaint. At our place my concerns deepend – it was undeniably the place we had booked, but nestled between two restaurants, across from an industrial laundry and a Oxxo (everything is next to an Oxxo). We had dinner at the connected Taco place, and I quickly discovered that my charming ignorance of local language and customs wasn’t going to get me very far.

Day 2: Tecolote beach

The beaches of note are a ways out of the city – 30 min or more by car.

We drove out to Tecolote beach to try out our snorkeling gear and beach towels. The beach is long – maybe a quarter of a mile. Fairly short, but very nice sand and a shallow angle going into the water. Almost everything was sand, a few rocky spots. We rented some chairs lounges and bought some Cievece and, well… Sat there. The usual suspects paraded by, selling this and that. A nice man spent most of the afternoon gathering shells from the beach for sale – he later turned out to be the helpful bathroom service provider (you gotta get a bucket of water to flush!).

I eventually got in for some snorkeling. The beach has gorgeous blue water, which means: just sand, nothing to see. I paddled down to one end and got a slightly better view. It was very easy to get disoriented, but frequent spy hopping kept me on the right track. I was surprised to see a woman and a dog on a paddle board just 30 feet away at one point. I had a nice stroll back up the beach with my neon pink flippers.