Todos Santos Tours--Baja Expeditions

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Todos Santos Tours and Surf School

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BAJA EXPEDITIONS

Todos Santos tours and surf school now offers surf trips to baja California. We can custom make these trips in almost any aspect to meet your personal desires but to give you a fundamental understanding of what you get we’ll start with the basics.

The Rough and Rugged Surf Adventure

This trip is everything the name implies. We leave San Diego in the Todos Star packed to the brim with camping gear, food, surf supplies and you! In search of perfect baja surf. We stay where we want for how long we want as long as we’re happy with the surf and a hurricane doesn’t blow through. We can spend three days in northern Baja or 6 days exploring the Baja coast from Rosarito to whereever. We can surf famous locales such as Baja Malibu and Scorpion Bay or take the roads less traveled in search of empty surf with perfect conditions. It’s up to you!

The destinations and length of stay at any given spot depend on prevailing and impending conditions of swell size and direction, wind and tides. Your guide will draw from years of personal experience as well as information from numerous other sources. These trips have been appealing to our clients whether they look to Lonely Planet as their bible or rely on services like <ahref="http://www.o2priority.co.uk/">priority</a> to get in on events. We share this information and recommendations with our patrons but the decision is ultimately yours.

These trips can be catered for beginning, intermediate and advanced levels and spectators are welcome also. You can put together a group of friends or family or in some cases, if all parties are agreeable, you can join another group. You can also use this trip for competition training.

The Baja star

The Baja star is our main machine for baja camping trips because it’s tough enough to go off road and big enough to hold you and all of our stuff. It's a GMC Yukon 4x4 equiped with A/C, roof rack, spare tire/ gas cans etc...…..

The Baja Star 2

The baja star 2 is our secondary vehicle to hold a few more people if necessary on our baja excursions and our main wagon for shorter trips with no camping gear. It’s a ’97 4runner 4x4 w A/C power everything and lots of fun.

Camping gear

Camping gear includes tents, sleeping bags, lamps, stove, portable shower, generator, gps, weather radio, etc...…

Surfing gear

Our surfing gear includes soft surfboards, wetsuits, rash guards, wax, sun screen, leashes and anything else that seems appropriate for the trip. You can bring your own equipment if you want or we find something different to accomodate your own personal needs.

Your stuff

The most important item for this trip is your passport; as of January 1^st 2007 all foreign travelers are required to have a passport to travel in Mexico. For these trips you can bring whatever clothes you need for a camping/surfing trip, comfy car travel and personal hygiene. We ask you to keep your stuff to one medium sized bag or suitcase so we can fit everything else we need in the Baja star. Health/travel insurance is also recommended.

Food

For our Baja excursions we bring all the food we will need or we’ll get more on the way. We also expect to catch a few fish if we’re not too busy surfing. We base our diet on nutritious food free from harmful additives, preservatives and hormones--- breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as snacks. The staples of our diet include lima beans, radishes, raw onions….just kidding!!!... We want your trip to be fun, so to the best of our ability and resources we’ll provide food you will enjoy. Your guide can prepare everything or you can help if you want. If you are a junk food junkie this would be a good time to clean out the system and detoxify. We can even set up a detox diet if you so desire or we can bring some of your favorite foods if you can’t survive without them.

Fishing gear

This is foremost a surfing trip so we will not be bringing the newest high-tech fishing gear but we will sometimes bring the basics so you can fish from shore or your surfboard. We may even bring some snorkeling gear if it’s appropriate for the trip. No licenses are required for this type of fishing in Mexico but spear guns are strictly forbidden. If you desire we can also take a day and go on a sports fishing boat for an additional cost.

Rates

For 3 days and 2 nights—Northern Baja

1-2 people $950.00 / $475.00 each

3 people $1275.00 / $425.00 each

4 people $1,600.00 / $400.00 each

For groups of 5 or more or extra days please contact us for rates.

For 6 days and 5 nights—Northern Baja and beyond

1-2 people $1,900.00 / $950.00 each

3 people $2,700.00 / $900.00 each

4 people $3,400.00 / $850.00 each

For groups of 5 or more or extra days please contact us for rates.

Variables on this trip provided at extra cost could include:

Sportsfishing

Lodging

Restraunt dining

Breaking the 40’ Barrier

by Joseph Descans

In the quest of achieving mastery of any given area of expertise is the gradual ascent of knowledge and experience that eventually takes one to the desired goal; if you succeed, of course. Obviously there are many places to stop off along the way for any number of reasons, but if you aspire to ride waves over forty feet I’ll share a little experience of my own that may help you.

In the summer of ’98 I was surfing a certain Mexican beach break known for breaking boards, bodies, buildings and anything else in its reach and I incidentally ended up breaking a bone of my own; My left femur in fact (you can read the account at surfer horror stories.com, or at www.todossantostours.com). After missing a winter of large surf at my favorite venue—killers at Todos Santos Island—to recover from my wound, the following season I had the daunting task of working my way back up to the forty foot realm both physically and psychologically.

As the leg healed incrementally over time, and with that the gradual increase of strength and surfing ability, the inevitable desire to return to big waves was augmented with the assurance of physical capability and countered by the unwanted question of, “Could I?” Having the youthful illusion of invincibility shattered with one fell swoop of an indiscriminant lip, could I overcome that psychological blow and once again put myself in harm’s way to such an extreme degree as to even attempt to catch 40 foot wave? The question plagued me and the desire to answer it drove me to increasingly larger surf until I could ultimately answer it.

The first big day

A big day for two reasons: the surf was a solid 30 foot on the sets, and this was the deciding event for the final step up. Oftentimes our advances are not made in our successes but in our failures.

After surfing a number of days at killers at ever-increasing sizes I arrived at what I knew would potentially be the door to the final level. The waves were a solid 30 feet on the sets and I was making the jump from the 8’6” to the 9’6”. The waves were clean and the form was fair to good but not quite special. In short time I was able to get a good reading on the boils and what was going to happen when certain boils activated in a certain manner and where I wanted to be to catch the wave. I got a good rhythm going and was catching and successfully riding lot of waves. I had two wipeouts of little consequence was feeling strong but still dealing with “The Question.”

Eventually a west peak set wave came through and I read the thing well enough to get in the right place to catch it. When I jumped to my feet for some reason I failed to stay there and found myself sliding on my back upside down and backwards down the face. From this vantage point I watched the wave continue to jack up and in a surreal slow-motion movie-style fashion saw the lip launch out toward me and at the bottom of the face I closed my eyes the instant before it landed directly on my head. The water forced open my eyelids and did many other unspeakable things to me for an extensive period of time before I finally made my way back to the surface. Reflecting on a quote of my own written in SURFER magazine a few years earlier, (after a similar experience which they captured on film and printed to my own humiliation for all the world to see) I consented that I had experienced “The worse thing that could possibly happen” and was therefore ready for the final level.

I have forever in deled in my memory an article by or about Ken Bradshaw in which he is reported to start his sessions at sunset beach by bodysurf lip-launching on a set wave (with accompanying photo of course). After flushing the body cavities in such a manner I’m sure he had overcome any fear of personal injury and was therefore ready to give it his all without reservation from that point forward. This approach has obviously worked out well for him over the years. I don’t know if he still does this today, especially towing in at jaws, but it certainly settles the fear factor issue up front so you can move on with the program.

The second big day

After a long day at the mavericks contest no-one was into going to Todos the next day so Jon Walla and I along with our friend Drew ended up having the main peak at killers all to ourselves. When I called Rob Brown he was on the road with his boat and had just turned back around for home because Parsons chickened out because he didn’t want to go down there without a jet ski or something. (Hey, it just feels good to say he chickened out when I didn’t). In spite of my urgent beckoning I failed to convince him to come. The weather radio said it was offshore at the tanner bank which meant the cleanest possible conditions…you really missed it Rob!

It was a consistent 30 foot for a few hours and about as close to dream conditions as you can get. We were catching lots of waves by ourselves on the outside with some other guys surfing a little further on the inside. At one point I was paddling back out about 30 yards behind Jon and I could tell there was something coming but couldn’t see it. Jon shouted back at me “If you saw what I see you’d be paddling a lot faster than that!” I picked up the pace but to no avail. The first peak broke way further out than anything else that morning. As it approached me I calculated that I could make it over the shoulder but as I neared the pit it sectioned on the west peak and I had to adjust the other way. As I attempted to scratch over the top between whitewaters it sandwiched me at the lip and I got sucked over backwards. This first wave was extremely frightening and very abusive. When I came to the top I got one and a half breaths before the second foam-bomb lip landed directly on top of my head as I submerged to avoid it. That was the first forty foot plus set after my injury.

Jon caught a wave on the next set of similar size and I caught a wave on the third one. The guys on the inside it was a giant barrel behind me and glowingly offered their congratulations. After that it dropped a few feet and after a bunch in the 35 foot range and a waning tide it dropped some more. When we saw the wind coming we left, but I had once again successfully broken the 40 foot barrier.