I’d had a dinner of chicken and rice, played a dice game and chatted with a couple from New York. It felt like 1am and time to head for my tent, but in fact it was not even eight o’clock.

“Out here, we call 8pm ‘Baja midnight’,” said Bernado, our guide, in a matter-of-fact way. “Most people are in bed by 7.30.”

“Baja” is Baja California, the long, dangly bit on Mexico’s west coast. Towards the southern tip, a half hour’s boat ride from the city of La Paz, Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida are two islands perfect for sea-kayaking around, and I was spending a week doing just that with 11 others.

In the Sea of Cortez that laps the eastern side of the peninsula, the waters are warm, calm and filled with all sorts of fascinating creatures, from tuna and turtles to manta rays and whales, the beaches are the stuff of chocolate-advert dreams, and there’s starkly barren scenery that would make a spaghetti-western director weep. Tall, muddy-red volcanic cliffs and hills are strewn with boulders and dappled with forests of nine-metre-high cacti. Hundreds of pelicans laze on rocks or cruise on air currents, every so often dive-bombing fish that venture too close to the surface.

La Paz, a two-hour flight south from Los Angeles, makes a pleasant introduction to Mexico. In the evenings, families and courting couples promenade on the five-kilometre (three-mile) Malecón, the city’s seafront. In the centre of town, people sit on benches and watch the world go by in Plaza Constitución, by the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Paz, while stalls selling cheap snacks do a roaring trade as thermometers nudge 30C.

After just one night there, though, I was being delivered on to a beach on Espiritu Santo. I’d been told my group might be full of singles so who knew? A future partner could just be a paddle away. However, the others who assembled for our introductory safety briefing were not a posse of potential blind dates but instead a friendly, diverse group of Americans, ranging in age from 11 to mid-60s.

Most were couples, though there were also father-son and mother-daughter bonders. And a fellow Brit — Angela Simms, 34, an IT manager from Herefordshire. “I wanted to kayak in a unique environment and to see this part of the world,” she said. Although most people had canoed previously there were no gung-ho professionals among us. Even for those such as Angela who hadn’t ever been in a kayak before, the boats were light and manoeuvrable, and the paddling technique easy to pick up and not too tiring.

The key to the success of any such trip lies in the guiding and we were lucky that as well as the extremely affable and knowledgeable 28-year-old biologist Bernado Cruz Montfort from Mexico City, we also had Francisco Riquelme, 37, with us. After dabbling in law and reading the news on television in his native Chile, he had walked 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada, hunted alligators in the Amazon, worked with horses in Mississippi and was something of a ladies’ man (he said).

Completing the team was Alvaro the rotund, jocular, permanently sunglassed chef, always cooking and smiling, who only ever got upset if you didn’t go back for thirds. Despite having only a trestle table and a couple of gas rings, Alvaro cooked up dishes such as tamales, quesadillas, chilaquiles, tacos, fish and an array of salads that would put many a restaurant to shame.

The pattern of days was to rise with the sun around 6.30am, have breakfast, pack up our tents and campsite (heavier items went in the motorboat driven by Alvaro) and paddle for the morning, stopping every so often for a cooling dip. There was a mixture of single and double kayaks, each quite stable despite an occasional swell away from protected inlets and beaches. We’d generally stick close to shore under the pink-tinged volcanic cliffs but sometimes went out across wide bays, keeping fairly well together as a group under the watchful eyes of Bernado and Francisco, who kayaked alongside.

Around midday we’d arrive at a new beach, have lunch shaded from the glaring sun under an awning, set up camp and then go snorkelling or hiking in the afternoon. Most times we chose the former, just drifting on the surface near the shore, looking at starfish, octopus and sea anemones and avoiding the poisonous stonefish that blended in to the rocks rather too efficiently. One afternoon though we chose a three-hour scramble to the other side of the island for spectacular hilltop views, and on another we just lazed on the beach.

Evenings always commenced with “happy hour” — Alvaro never, ever ran out of margaritas or piña coladas — before the sun set around six, then we’d settle down to dinner and chat. In fact, we talked so much about everything imaginable Oprah would have been proud of us. After all, it’s not every beach in Mexico that contains two non-Finnish Finnish speakers, a lesbian mother of four, a former Broadway child star, a gay couple about to adopt a daughter, a woman who happily talks about both her husband and boyfriend, and a dotcom founder with two children born 13 days apart.

Midway through the week we swam with a colony of California sea lions, which we all agreed was quite magical as dozens of them darted by our heads, somersaulted beneath us and came and playfully nipped us to see if we merited further chomping.

This is not a trip for those who want to go clubbing every night or whose essential holiday packing includes a hairdryer. The shower for the week was the ocean. Piddling was done as subtly as possible in the sea. For anything else there was “Paco”, the portable lavatory, which, after a stern lecture on proper use from Bernado on day one, stayed remarkably fragrant all week.

If that sounds a bit grim, it wasn’t at all. It was easy to forget Paco when lying on the sand at night watching shooting stars, eating Alvaro’s delicious antojitos, looking at brightly coloured fish watching us watching them watching us, or kayaking inside dark sea caves.

By the end of our seven days I was very happily exhausted. I was glad to get back to the mainland and freshen up but as soon as I’d scrubbed off the layers of salt and dirt and insect repellent, I wanted to go back and get out on the water again. No chance, though. The guides were already getting ready for the next group. “There are five single girls from Ventura, California,” remarked Francisco over tequilas and beers, in wide-eyed wonderment, as if Ventura was the mythical home of a tribe of Amazonian superwomen. If only I had been a week later it could have been a whole different trip — but with the experiences I’d had and friends I had made, I would not have swapped.

Need to know

Getting there: Will Hide flew to LA with Virgin Atlantic (0870 5747747, www.virgin.com/atlantic) which has two flights daily from Heathrow from £487.40 return.

A connecting flight with Aero California to La Paz can be booked through Journey Latin American (see below) and costs from £175 return.

Staying there: Journey Latin America (020-8747 8315, www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk) offers a ten-day kayaking trip in Baja California from £1,132 per person including all flights, two nights’ hotel accommodation in La Paz, six nights’ full-board camping, guiding, kayaking and camping equipment. Reading: Cabo: La Paz to Cabo San Lucas (Moon Handbooks, £11.99); Adventure Kayaking Baja (Wilderness Press, £8.90); Baja California (Lonely Planet, £10.99); The Log from the Sea of Cortez, by John Steinbeck (Penguin £10.99).

Further information: www.kayakinbaja.com.