Los Cabos Ocean Relays

A pre-dawn start beneath clear desert stars sends relay teams into glowing waters, tracing 35 kilometers of coastline. The Los Cabos Ocean Relays is an open-water marathon relay held in the sea off Los Cabos, in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Organized by Baja Swim Series, the event connects the two main marinas of the cape corridor across 35 kilometers of open water. Held in January, the relay gets underway well before sunrise, leaving teams to navigate the coastal passage toward an evening cutoff. Swimmers find temperate winter waters along the cape, avoiding the heavier surface warmth that settles over the region during the peak summer months. Before stepping into the waves, a swimmer performed a quiet ritual of gratitude by offering a desert flower to the sea at the starting point.

The opening stretch carries teams through the dark under starry skies, their arms churning through black swells illuminated by fluorescent bioluminescence. As dawn approaches, shifting coastal tides can rise abruptly, confronting swimmers with currents that feel like an immovable wall in the middle of the ocean. Yet these demanding morning surges soon yield as daylight spreads, giving way to calmer coastal water where comfortable conditions and teeming marine life restore a steady swimming rhythm.

El Arco and Punta Ballenas: marine life in the gulf

El Arco, a natural stone arch, stands dramatically at the point where the Pacific Ocean meets the Gulf of California. The surrounding waters of the Sea of Cortés feel like an open aquarium, described by marathon swimmers as magical and vibrant with life. Before reaching Punta Ballenas, swimmers pass over an underwater garden filled with thousands of colorful fish darting beneath the surface. Approximately 800 species of fish inhabit these waters, which later in the year become a celebrated destination for marlin during the summer high season. January also sits right at the start of the winter whale watching season, which runs through March as the animals migrate to the sheltered waters around the cape to breed.

Sierra de la Laguna and the San José River estuary

About eight kilometres from the race area, the San José River, which runs underground from the Sierra de la Laguna, surfaces to form an estuary protected behind a one-kilometer-long sand bar, ranking as the third largest in Mexico. This arid desert shore has ancient marine origins, having once rested entirely underwater. The coastline still preserves this submerged past, with marine animal fossils dating back up to 25 million years.

Bahía de San Bernabé: privateers and the indigenous Pericú shore

Human history along these sands stretches back to the indigenous Pericú people, who lived along the coast when Spanish explorers first arrived. A nomadic hunter-gatherer culture, the Pericú lived using Stone Age tools. For nearly two centuries, the southern cape of the Baja California peninsula served as a haven for Spanish navigators, as well as English privateers.