Bahia de Banderas

We have been coming to this area of Mexico for 8 years now, staying in different places along the Bahia de Banderas. I’ve been swimming and boogie boarding in the bay, taken a whale watching tour and a sunset cruise, and sailed in the bay aboard my brother’s sailboat SV Naida. But today was the first time I’ve gone kayaking in the bay and it was wonderful.

At Paradise Village where we are staying there are kayak trips on Sunday and Thursday morning, before the wind comes up. I tried to go last week but the waves were too high so it was cancelled. But today I got to go, along with about a dozen others. The person who usually guides the group didn’t show up, so we were given a few seconds of instruction and sent off into the bay on our own. “Stay in the middle of the channel away from the rocks and don’t go near the beach”. That was it. And off we went. I headed off along the shore as I wanted to see our condo, Playa Royale, from the water. Others headed further out into the bay, hopefully they’ve come back by now. No pictures unfortunately as I didn’t take my phone.

It was a different feel to be kayaking in the ocean with the gentle swells under the boat. I’ve only ever gone out in smaller lakes, which are usually pretty calm or with small waves. Staying away from shore I didn’t have to fight the big crashing waves, as I’ve seen people try to head from the beach out through the surf to go kayaking and it looks like a difficult exercise. We launched within the breakwater so had an easy time getting out into the bay and no conditions out there were good. By the afternoon the wind had really picked it and it would have been very challenging to try to kayak.

All in all it was fun and I hope to be able to go out again before we leave here.