Some of the greatest minds on Earth, live in the seas. ~ Anthony Douglas Williams
Happiness is Hanging with Whales
So as I mentioned last week I spent a week in Mexico, Baja generally, San Ignacio Lagoon specifically in the breeding/calving grounds of the Pacific Grey Whale. The trip I did was with Baja Expeditions, I did this trip several years ago during the pandemic and below are links to the posts I did about that extraordinary trip.
On this trip I didn’t get as lucky as I did the first time but it was still an amazing trip. The trip works out this way, you fly into Cabo San Lucas for a day, check-in for the trip the next day. You get up insanely early and take a bus to the private airport at the San Jose Del Cabo airport. You board a small Cessna and fly 150 miles up the coast of Baja and land on the beach. It’s a lot less adventurous than it sounds but still pretty exciting. You eat a quick lunch and immediately board a 15 foot panga (a small local style fishing boat} with six or seven other people and head out into the lagoon and the whale sanctuary. The whale sanctuary is a UNESCO World Heritage site and well regulated to protect the Grey Whales. These regulations include limiting the number of boats in the lagoon, the speed they can travel and the amount of time each boat can spend there.
The really amazing thing about this place though is that the whales have become incredibly curious about humans, to the point of wanting to interact with them. This time I was there near the end of the season, the males had moved on and it was just mothers and calves left in the lagoon. These little babies are already eight to twelve feet long. The whales seem very comfortable being near the boats and very curious about the critters in the boats. The baby whales especially spend a lot of time swimming up near the boats and playing with the people. Often people on the boats splash water at the whales hoping to attract them. And the whales seem to really dig this. Probably the coolest interaction I had this trip was a baby whale that we were splashing a couple feet from the boat who appeared to love it. The little whale stayed at the surface while we splashed it, and even rolled over so we could splash it’s belly. All the time this little whale was looking right at us making full eye contact the whole time.
There isn’t much else to say about the trip, I talked about the people on the boat last week, I was fortunate to have a good group on my boat. The photo at the top of the post was taken by Jen on the boat, she also took this one:
This particular whale did no less than a dozen spy hops in about twenty minutes. It was wonderful to be in the sun on the ocean, but even with SPF 70 on the first day I got a little too much sun on my face, so I took precautions:
Below are a series of videos that I took on the trip, enjoy and have a happy day. ~ Rev Kane
The Ministry of Happiness 