The morning started with National Geographic Sea Bird anchored in Bahia Almejas. As the sun broke through the clouds, everyone excitedly prepared to set out whale watching. The pangas took us to the mouth of the bay and we found ourselves surrounded by gray whales! It was amazing to look around and see the giants in every direction. After the up-close encounters with the whales, the ship moved to Isla Magdalena. Everyone went ashore for a short hike through the sand dunes to the Pacific. We explored all along the way and naturalists pointed out beautiful flowers, intriguing animal tracks, and revealed the hidden mystery of sand dollars. The sand was as fine as flour and felt amazing under bare feet as we all walked back through the last light of the day.
2/25/2022
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National Geographic Venture
Port Lopez Mateos
This morning, National Geographic Venture docked at the interesting port, San Carlos. From the 1940s to the 1990s, the port was used for loading agricultural products and fertilizers from the nearby Santo Domingo Valley. Nowadays, San Carlos is basically a place for loading sardines from a local cannery. It is also an important tourist base for whale-watching, principally mating gray whales. At the port, all guests and staff boarded buses to Lopez Mateos, a town located near the northernmost tip of Magdalena Island. The buses traveled across Magdalena Plain, a section of the Sonoran Desert that receives a lot of moisture in the form of dense fog from the Pacific Ocean. Lichens and orchillas, a type of flowering plant, give the desert a phantasmagoric appearance. Guests and staff enjoyed spotting numerous birds, including crested caracaras and kestrels. Once in Lopez Mateos, we boarded local pangas for whale-watching. During two rounds of whale-watching, we encountered several whales close to our pangas. However, most of the whales were preoccupied with traveling, searching for mates, or just finishing their time of reproduction and thus exiting the lagoon. In reality, the whales were not interested in interacting with the boats and their excited cargo, but we had many opportunities to observe the behavior of these magnificent animals. In town, we all delighted in a delicious fish lunch, ‘pescado zarandeado.’ We enjoyed exploring the local dock with its many colorful shops and crafts, and we admired the wonderful sculpture of a cow-calf pair of gray whales.
