Josh Baldwin to "Race The Two Seas" at CABO 500 in 2006

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- Famed Desert Offroad Racer, Josh Baldwin to "Race The Two Seas" at the CABO 500 in 2006.

"Josh is committed to Racing" the Biggest, Baddest, Baja South Desert Offroad Race of the 2006 Season. On April 29, 2006, desert offroad racers from all over the world will run in the Mexican National Championship desert offroad race. Named the "Race The Two Seas - CABO 500", because the amazing course runs 500 kilometers, on the coasts of the Sea Of Cortez and mighty Pacific Ocean to the mega-resort of Cabo San Lucas.

The CABO 500 starts in the international resort of La Paz, with over 200 expected desert offroad racing entries. Among the American stars of desert offroad racing expected to compete are desert racing champ Mark Handley of Solar Racing and the Trophy Truck team of Joe Stevens.

The CABO 500 will honor the memory of offroad racing champion Jason Baldwin. The offroad racing community of Baja, Mexico remembers its special affinity with Jason and is mourned by the entire offroad racing community. The CABO 500 - Race The Two Seas - 2006 is dedicated to the spirit of sportsmanship in desert offroad racing, that Jason lived in life.

Special events will celebrate the graced life of Jason Baldwin and the brotherhood of all international desert offroad racers.
CABO 500 Race The Two Seas 2006
One Race, One Adventure, One Passion
CABO 500 http://www.cabo500.com/
In Memory Of Jason Baldwin 66

Sunterra Purchases Premier Oceanfront Property in Cabo San Lucas

LAS VEGAS, NV; Dec 06, 2005
Sunterra Corporation (NASDAQ: SNRR) announced today that it has acquired the Misiones del Cabo Hotel and Resort property in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The property offers stunning views of both the Sea of Cortez and the city of Cabo San Lucas. Existing on-site amenities include pools with swim-up bars, whirlpool spas, tennis courts, a poolside bar and grill and two distinctive and secluded beaches. The resort is a short drive from Los Cabos International Airport, is less than three miles from downtown Cabo San Lucas, and is located near two world-class golf courses.

Sunterra's site plan for the vacation ownership resort calls for three building phases, with an estimated retail value of approximately $200 million at full build out. The first two phases, which will comprise approximately one-third of the total units, are expected to be complete in 2006. The units in the third and final phase will have dramatic oceanfront views of Cabo San Lucas and the famous arch at "Lands End."

Nick Benson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sunterra, said, "This upscale location is a valuable addition to Sunterra's core western U.S. locations in Hawaii, California and Arizona. The largest concentration of U.S. Club Sunterra members is in the western states, and Cabo San Lucas is an extremely popular destination for them. We are delighted to permanently secure another outstanding resort for Club Sunterra."

The total cost of the project at full build out will be approximately $50 million, which includes initial consideration of nearly $11 million for oceanfront land, the related resort hospitality management contract, and construction deposits. This purchase will provide replacement vacation interest inventory to support sales in the region and adds an attractive vacation resort destination for members who currently utilize Sunterra's existing southwest, California and Hawaii resorts. It will eventually represent another distribution point for Club Sunterra as well.

ABOUT SUNTERRA
Sunterra is one of the world's largest vacation ownership companies with more than 300,000 owner member families and nearly a hundred branded or affiliated vacation ownership resorts throughout the continental United States and Hawaii, Canada, Europe, the Caribbean and Mexico. Sunterra news releases, as well as additional news and information on the company, can be found at www.sunterra.com.

Statements about future results, and construction completion dates made in this release and the statements attached hereto constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. The company cautions that these statements are not guarantees of future performance, and involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause results to differ materially from those anticipated at the time such statements are made, including risks associated with making financial forecasts and estimates. Many of these risks and uncertainties are presented in detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Sunterra's most recent report on Form 10-K. Although we believe the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be attained or that results will not materially differ. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

The price of tranquility in an underdeveloped Mexican lagoon

Conservation groups will give a yearly stipend to Mexican landowners to save a whale refuge - and a way of life.
By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO, MEXICO – They have already passed San Diego: thousands of gray whales making their annual 10,000-mile voyage from feeding grounds in the Arctic circle to the warm winter waters of Baja California.
By now, many of them - the males ahead, the females straggling behind - are arriving in Laguna San Ignacio, one of the world's last underdeveloped lagoons. Here, they will give birth to their young, rear them, and prepare for the long trip back north to Alaska in the spring.
The lagoon has been a home to the whales - as well as 221 species of birds, green sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, and osprey - for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And now, thanks to an innovative cross-border conservation agreement, it will be protected in perpetuity.
The deal signed Oct. 25 between US and Mexico-based conservation groups and the 43 members of the local land collective, or ejido, stipulates that fishers and whale-watching guides here will protect the 120,000 acres they own along the shores of the lagoon. In exchange for payments of $25,000 a year from a group of conservationists, the ejido also will limit industrial and tourist projects in favor of low-impact developments.
The deal marks the first time a private land trust has been negotiated for an ejido's entire territory. The legally binding deal is being touted as a model for conserving both the environment and the area's cultural and traditional identity.

The Laguna San Ignacio Conservation Alliance, which includes the conservation group Wildcoast and the Natural Resources Defense Council, raised nearly $1.8 million for the project. It hopes to eventually bring the other five ejidos in the region into the program as well, and so preserve the entire 1 million acres of pristine ecosystem around the lagoon, which has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site.
"Businesses are not necessarily interested in whales," says Serge Dedina, Wildcoast's executive director, "or in the communities living around the lagoon as they go about their effort to build the next Cancún. Our goal is to empower people and ensure they can protect the land. We care about the whales, but we are also motivated by social justice and ethical responsibility."

Preserving whales and a lifestyle
José de Jesús Varela Galvan, a member of the Luis Echeverría ejido that struck the deal, is also the director of Kuyima, an ecotourism company that takes tourists out on whale trips. He echoes this sentiment: "Whales are charismatic, enigmatic, smart, and basically marvelous," he says. "But in this case, they are a means to an end for us - preserving our way of life for our children and grandchildren."

The money from the fund will be used for an array of projects, explains ejido president Raúl Eduardo Lopez. Suggestions so far include building an ice factory for packing fish, giving the middle school its own building, expanding the oyster factory, bringing in a pharmacy, and maybe starting a pig farm. "We need these projects to succeed, and we want to pay back into the fund ... in order to prove to ourselves - and to our neighbors - that this is the way to go," Mr. Lopez says.
All project proposals will have to be approved by Pronatura, Mexico's largest conservation group, which is part of the alliance and charged with monitoring the agreement.

"They can do most anything that does not put the environment at risk," says Fernando Ochoa Pineda, a Pronatura lawyer. Ecotourism is fine, for example, but a mega-resort with a golf course is not - because of the pesticides, the immense water usage, and the sewage. Fishing and farming is allowed, but a marina would be rejected, as would a salt factory. "We are aware there needs to be development," says Mr. Ochoa. "The only question is what kind of development."

The monetary incentive is meant to offset the rising tide of offers that are tempting many poor landowners. Nine years ago, Mitsubishi Corp. came here proposing a 500,000-acre industrial salt-harvesting factory. It would have drained the lagoon, but paid well. The plan was eventually scuppered after a long campaign by conservationists. More recently, other salt companies, along with oil-exploration groups, have expressed interest in the land.

"The seduction of a quick buck is enormous, especially in these poor areas," says Richard Kiy, president of the San Diego-based International Community Foundation (ICF), which will maintain the alliance's trust fund. "What we are trying to do is take a proactive approach and give the ejidos an income stream, which allows them to achieve community goals and control their own future ... while at the same time protecting the whales' habitat," he says.

In the course of hammering out the deal, members of a former land collective in Cabo San Lucas, a tourist destination south of here, met with the communities at the lagoon. They told a cautionary tale about selling their land.
"Those people used to own their land, too," says Kiy. "Now they are working there as busboys, or cleaners - and so are their children."
Most landowners still want to sell
Still, not everyone is convinced, and it seems that getting more ejidos to join the project will be a tough battle. Up to 60 percent of landowners in the region want to sell, according to a recent ICF study.

"My ejido does not seem interested in this plan," says Francisco "Pachico" Mayoral, a boat mechanic and tourism camp owner who is a member of the San Ignacio ejido. "They want to be able to sell and do whatever they want with the land, because they have heard that North Americans are coming to buy here and they have a lot of money. Mr. Mayoral says he personally has nothing against the project, but ejidos must make the commitment as a group, not as individuals.

Over at the center of the Luis Echeverría ejido, children gather among scattered old truck parts and painted tire fences to watch their fathers and brothers bring in the week's catch of lobsters.

"Of course we could always do with more money in our pockets," says Victor Ramirez Gallegos, an ejidatario with rough hands and sunburned lips. "But on the other hand," he says, "We have a school. We have light with our solar panels and a small water-purification plant. We eat lobsters. We even have a satellite hookup for Internet," he says, packing the lobsters in a truck for the long drive up the coast.

Mr. Gallegos fishes for lobsters in October and November, leads whale-watching tours from December through April, and dives for scallops the rest of the year. "God willing, I will pass this life along to my children," he explains, picking up his 1-year-old son, Victor, who is playing with a trash bag on the sand. "It's good to have money," he says chuckling to himself, "but tranquility is worth a lot ... and not only for the whales."

Forget Moby Dick, these whales are enchanting

By Jay Solmonson
Alameda Newspaper Group

SAN IGNACIO, Mexico - Call me a scaredy-cat, but there's something unsettling about floating in a skiff the size of a double-wide coffin in a lagoon full of whales.
Maybe reading about Moby Dick during my whale-watching trip to Baja California was a bad idea. Visions of a pitiless sea, tons of angry whale rising from the depths, splintered planks and my bleaching bones swam in my head as we drifted in San Ignacio Lagoon.
This lagoon, along with Scammon's Lagoon and Bahia Magdalena, is among the world's best whale-watching destinations. All three Pacific Coast bays are winter homes for gray whales, and every January, February and into March, the lagoons become virtual maternity wards for thousands of them.
A panga ride among these whales, which can weigh up to 40 tons and measure up to 50 feet long, is one of the wonders of Baja.
Most passengers on Lindblad Expedition's Sea Lion said they'd made the trip just for the chance to shake flippers with the great beasts of the deep.
Our eight-day journey was far shorter than that of the whales. Gray whales make one of the longest of all mammalian annual migrations - 10,000 to 14,000 miles round trip. In October, they leave their feeding grounds in Alaska's Bering Sea for a two-to-three-month trip south. Then they stay in the lagoons for another two to three months, allowing their calves to fatten up, before they all swim back north.
Laws that now protect the gray whales were far
from the thoughts of Captain Ahab's ilk, as 19th-century whalers hunted them to the edge of extinction.
But those days are long gone. Today's whale hunters now wield cameras, not harpoons, and have traded personal privations for comfort. And the mother whales, nicknamed "devilfish" by whalers because of their violent defensive behavior, have nothing to fear.
Aboard the Sea Lion, the only peril faced by the 70 passengers was overindulging at the lunch buffet.
We left the Sea Lion docked in Santa Rosalia on the Gulf of California and traveled overland by bus to the desert oasis town of San Ignacio.
A guacamole-and-chip break in the tree-lined town plaza was followed by a visit to the 18th- century Mission San Ignacio de Loyola. The 4-foot-thick walls made the mission's church a cool and quiet refuge where contemplation came naturally.
And we had a lot to contemplate.
Since landing in La Paz and joining our ship near Magdalena Bay on the Pacific Coast, we'd been caught in the net of Baja's charms.
Thirty years before, my wife and I had driven the Baja Highway, Mexican Route 1, about 1,000 miles from Cabo San Lucas to Tijuana. We'd driven a rust-bucket VW Bug that acted like it had a tank full of Raid, and stayed in rooms that would make a cucaracha cringe. But this time we'd hanged the expense from the yardarm (Lindblad's rates start at $3,490 per person, double occupancy).
We were delighted to be cruising south along the cactus-lined shores of the Pacific coast of Baja in our floating oasis. From sunrise to sunset, we could join other whale-watchers on the bow. And always, a naturalist with eyes like radar was scanning the ocean for whales.
Frequent sightings were called out in the military tradition of using an imaginary watch, with high noon being dead ahead. So, when a naturalist spotted a whale, she'd forgo the wild shout of Ahab's day - "Thar she blows!" - with an excited call of "Whale at two o'clock!"
All binoculars would aim at the spot of the blow to see a geyser of mist hanging in the air. If need be, the ship would slow, so we could better observe the ocean's superstars.
Most often, the whales would be humpbacks, with their broad and rounded heads poking just enough above the surface to exhale and inhale.
To our delight, after a few minutes a humpback would sound (go into a long or deep dive), throwing his fluke skyward, exposing a great tail stretching up to 18 feet wide. They're called humpbacks because as they dive, they bend their backs and point their noses down while gracefully raising their tails above the water.
Not only are these whales elegant divers, but they can stop the show, along with the ship, with their acrobatics - launching themselves completely out of the water (a maneuver called breaching). When 30 to 40 tons of flying
whale sail above the ocean just off the bow, mature adults ooh and ah like kindergartners.
The whales share the limelight with giant manta rays that also soar above the waves. Above, brown pelicans, sea gulls, cormorants and frigate birds patrol the skies.
Then there are the pods of dolphins, sometimes 100 or more to a pod, which would glide and leap alongside our ship. The daredevils among them would ride our bow wake, swimming close to the ship. We would peek over the side and be hypnotized by the sound of the water crashing against the bow and by the sight of dolphins taking a joy ride with us.
Not all the fun of this trip occurred at sea, though. Every day we would make stops on desert islands or along the coast. Some of Baja's coastline is little changed from the time five centuries ago when Spanish conquistadors landed here.
Baja is a scantily populated wilderness, with 75 percent of the peninsula's population living along the border with the United States. Much of it is an inhospitable desert, but we looked on it and saw a beautiful, bone-dry, spiny wonderland.
There was a brief stop in Cabo San Lucas, where buckets of beer, shopping malls and time- share vendors tempt mariners too long at sea. But we weren't buying.
We preferred hikes through arroyos where only the flora was out to stick it to us.
One evening, on a forbidding desert island, the Sea Lion's crew threw us a beach party under the stars.
Ultimately, the trip found us on that skiff in San Ignacio Lagoon, where our captain promptly cut the engine. We were becalmed: just a blue sky, a blue sea and tranquillity. We could only hear the sound of small waves lapping against the sides of our panga.
I'd read the stories about Moby Dick, Jonah and Pinocchio. So I wasn't buying all that nonsense about the gray whale's diet of krill and small fish. And what was all that talk about "friendlies" - the whales said to be curious enough to slide over for a skiff-side visit with humans?
About this time, the screaming started. Screams of delight.
A mother drifted over, her calf just under one of her flippers. They were two shadowy hulks blending with the blue of the sea. Even the baby was huge (they weigh up to 1,500 pounds at birth, and this calf had been nursing overtime).
I was a bit concerned when Mom bumped our skiff with her back, shaking us the way a cat might tease a mouse. But she meant no harm.
Then the calf poked its rubbery head up alongside us, nuzzled our boat and looked us right in the eye before letting us have it with a whale-sized sneeze.
We literally crawled all over one another to touch her. The whale's skin was slick, smooth, cool and soft, like an inflated inner tube.
And that face! It was a face only a mother whale and a panga full of gleeful gringos could love.

The wonder of whale-watching

l Whale-watching: Landlubbers can drive to the lagoons of Baja and hire a local panga driver to take them out for a spin among the whales. But it's a long drive and the facilities are rustic. We were delighted to go by boat with Lindblad Expeditions: http://www.expeditions.com; 800-397-3348. Eight-day trips are offered in January, February and March, when the whales winter here. Prices from $3,490 per person, double occupancy.

l Photography: Get ready to bear down. Bring long lenses and a fast trigger finger. Whales may breach (propel themselves above the surface), but there's no countdown for launch. When they explode out of the ocean, you have a couple of seconds to focus and shoot. Sunsets are a sure bet. Even a snap-happy rookie shutterbug with a point-and-shoot camera can bring home enchanting photos.

Cancun's damage is Los Cabos' gain

Mexico
Cancun's damage is Los Cabos' gain

The most frazzled people in Los Cabos these days may be the wedding planners: Thousands of vacationers are flocking to Cabo and other western Mexican resorts to relax and say their "I do's."

They headed to the resort area after Hurricane Wilma thrashed Cancun — the country's premier resort — in late October. Most hotels and many businesses along Cancun's 10-mile waterfront strip still are closed, and much of the beach has been stripped of its white sand.

Destination weddings have become increasingly popular among Americans. Veronica Miranda, a wedding planner at the 642-room Riu hotel, Cabo's largest resort, had six weddings in three days in late November. "People spend a year planning and then have to redo everything ... so the pressure is on," she said.

"It has been a crazy few months," said Vari Avila, of Baja Weddings. "First we were working with couples whose weddings in New Orleans were canceled. And now, we are being bombarded with inquiries from Cancun and Cozumel," she said.

Los Cabos — which includes Cabo San Lucas and the 20-mile stretch of Baja coastline leading to the town of San Jose del Cabo — has about 10,000 hotel and time-share rooms. Cancun has 27,000 rooms, and the nearby Riviera Maya, which had less hurricane damage, has 24,000. Half of Cancun's rooms will be habitable by Christmas, the Cancun Hotel Association said.

Students begin planning for spring break travels - News

Anthony Travel books students early for vacation destinations
By: Laura Baumgartner
Issue date: 11/30/05 Section: News
Article Tools: Page 1 of 1

The holiday season has arrived and brought with it a cold, snowy South Bend winter - leaving many students dreaming of sun, sand, surf and 80-degree temperatures as they make spring break vacation plans.
Nearly 100 students have already booked vacations through Anthony Travel, said Kayleen Carr, leisure manager for the agency.
"Typically we see about 600 students book through us per year," Carr said.
Carr said cruises and destinations in Mexico are usually the most popular vacation choices among students.
"Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas have also been very popular," she said.

Following this trend, Joey Maher, a junior at Notre Dame, is planning a trip to Acapulco with several of his friends.
"We were deciding between Jamaica, Acapulco and one other place," he said. "But because of the hurricanes, we decided it's going to be Acapulco 2005, baby."
Maher said 15 to 50 people will be flying to Acapulco for spring break.
"We have a package that includes everything," Maher said. "We're trying to get as many people as possible to go because the more people we have, the cheaper it will be."

Cost is an issue many students are concerned with when planning their travels. Some students said they are waiting to finalize their plans because they are searching for a deal on airlines and hotels on popular Internet travel sites.
"I might be going to Montana with friends to go skiing at Big Sky," said Kat Kindt, a Saint Mary's junior. "It depends on what kind of price I can find for flights. It's really just all about the money."

Not all students are planning the stereotypical trip to paradise, including those who will already be studying abroad.
"My roommate and I will be in Rome next semester," said Emily Addis, a Saint Mary's sophomore. "Our spring break will be two weeks of nonstop travel throughout as much of Europe as we can possibly see."

Other students are using their break to get away from school and visit family or relatives.
"I'll probably just go to Arizona to visit my grandma," Saint Mary's junior Emily Griesemer said. "My friend and I are planning on going on a summer abroad program, so I have to do something inexpensive, like go to Arizona.