La Entrada
A dense fog embraced Bahía Magdalena this morning. With the first light, we sank into the whiteness riding our Zodiacs in search of gray whales. Using all our senses, including our sense of intuition, it did not take too long to find the majestic leviathans breaking the surface of the water under the horizonless haze. After a few moments of uncertainty of where they would surface again, a mother and calf pair slowly changed direction and headed towards us. The curious calf took its head out of the water just a few inches from the Zodiac’s pontoon. Both whales seemed to have fun under our boats and we could feel the whale-propelled boat moving around as the calf gently pushed us with its head. This was such an amazing experience, to look into a whale’s eye as it looks back at you.
We left Bahia Magdalena behind through the southern opening of the bay, La Entrada. Here a few more gray whale adults were seen. Out on the Pacific Ocean, as we sailed towards Cabo San Lucas, we had an encounter with the largest of the animals that has inhabited our planet; blue whales. At least two, maybe three of these behemoths surfaced and produced their typical tall columnar blow, that could be seen from a great distance.
Shortly after the blues, a feeding frenzy (or as it is known in this area, a bochinche) brought everyone out to the bow again. Hundreds of sea birds, including black-vented shearwaters and different gull species caught the small fish that a good sized group of long-beaked common dolphins scared close to the surface. In no time at all, the dolphins dashed toward our ship to ride our bow for about ten minutes. All these breath-taking events took place today, and this is just the prelude to what awaits for us in the Gulf of California.
