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I’m hovering on the surface of Mexico’s Sea of Cortez with a pod of pilot whales, black and sleek with strange bulbous heads. As I peer through the jade water, a 12-footer rolls on its back and eyeballs me for a long moment before slipping into the deep with an easy flip of its fluke. Then the pod arcs out of the water and moves out to sea. Having had my behemoth-mammal fix for the day, I hop into the waiting panga and head home to the desolate, cardón cactus-studded Isla Espiritu Santo, where iced Pacifico beers and salsa-smothered fish tacos are waiting.

The Sea of Cortez is Big Animal country—nowhere else on the planet can you see such an array of whale sharks, manta rays, hammerhead sharks, and even blue whales, the planet’s largest creature. The range of wildlife here—31 species of marine mammals and 500 species of fish—is astounding. But Baja is also Kick-Back-and-Camp country, where watching HBO with the AC blasting in a five-star resort complex doesn't have to be part of the program. A half dozen of the best dive sites are short boat hauls away from uninhabited Isla Espiritu Santo, 23,383-acres of rose-colored rock lying four miles east of Southern Baja’s state capital, La Paz. The island’s edges are riddled with miles of coves sheltering white sand beaches, ideal sites from which to launch a world-class diving, snorkeling, sea kayaking, and camping assault. Be forewarned: Unless you want to get shrink-wrapped in Neoprene, early fall is the best time to come, when temperatures start dropping from their 110-degree August peak, the pelagics are plentiful, and the water is Herradura Silver-clear.

While it’s possible to arrange the details on your own, my dive buddy Brad Doane and I cut out logistical red tape by booking a three-day Dive Safari package with La Paz-based Baja Quest. The trip came with a small crew to pamper us — keeping the cervezas cold, whipping us up tasty breakfast burritos, and attending to the other essential details, like setting up sun-showers and the camp toilet. (The island's 12 sites adhere to a strict pack-it-in, pack-it-out doctrine.) When we set foot on Playa Candelero late the first morning (so-named for the rocky outcrops in the bay that are dead-ringers for wax-dripped candle holders), all we had to do was pitch our tent and unroll our sleeping bags. We shared the quarter-mile-long stretch of bleached sand with a group of eight Japanese sea kayakers. They didn’t speak much English, but kept us supplied with milk-flavored candy and unidentifiable pickled treats.

After chucking our dive gear into the Marazul, a 25-foot panga, the captain, Jose “Chino” Hernandez, a 35-year Sea of Cortez veteran, zips us out to El Bajo, a cluster of sea mounts rising to 60 feet below the surface, famous for schooling hammerhead sharks. Chino anchors, we strap on our tanks, and drop 102 feet down. We don't see any hammerheads this dive, but we're happy spotting the enormous moray eels gaping at us from their rocky lairs, and taking in the swirling columns of jack and bait fish that rise several stories high to the surface. Afterwards, we motor over to the wreck of the Fang Ming, a 300-foot Chinese long liner sunk in 1999 to create an artificial reef. We fin through the old barge past swaying fans of black coral, and circle the wheelhouse among massive schools of grunt, snapper and barracuda. Later, at Los Islotes, a rocky, guano-drenched outcrop just north of Isla la Partida, which is home to about 350 honking, stinking California sea lions, a playful, juvenile sea lion nibbles Brad's hair before coming over to gnaw on my flipper, as we're in 12 feet of water offshore.

The diving was endless — we could have easily stayed for three weeks instead of three days, and the rest of our trip becomes a blur of undersea eye-candy. Some of our most memorable wildlife encounters were on the surface — great pods of dolphins visiting the boat, tuxedo-colored mobula rays summersaulting in acrobatic displays, and the tips of a manta ray’s wings breaking the water as we skimmed past. At one point, while I snorkel off Isla Espiritu Santo, a pair of 35-foot humpback whales spout just ahead of me, and their massive flukes tower over the surface before the majestic animals course through the water below me.

Back at Playa Candelero for our last night, I hang my wetsuit to dry in the balmy desert breeze and follow a trail into a side canyon of pink volcanic tuft dotted with curving, white-barked palo blanco trees. As I wash the sea salt off me with buckets drawn from a fresh water well, a ringtailed cat prowls through the brush nearby, and a collared lizard watches me from its perch on a rock. I return to camp to find fresh pitchers of margaritas set up for happy hour, and the Japanese belting out their favorite songs from home. Then the divemaster, Armando, and the cook, Resario, sing a soulful Spanish duet called Guantes de Oro. Soon everyone's singing something, and as our group howls away, the sun fireballs beyond the tall cliffs of the Baja peninsula and is replaced with a full moon brightening a swath of criss-crossed cumulus clouds. “In Japan, we call those uroko-gumo—fish-scale clouds,” one of my new Japanese friends, Hisanori Watanabe, tells me. Out here, it seems that even the sky takes note of the marine life below.

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