Loreto Bay National Park
The first day of our expedition couldn’t start in a better way: minutes after sunrise we encountered a large group of long-beaked common dolphins. The warm tones of the beautiful low light made the dolphins even prettier than normal. We enjoyed their grace and speed as they swam and jumped all around and everyone on board got very good views of them. That’s an excellent start, if you ask me!
However, not long after breakfast, the National Geographic Sea Bird headed towards a couple of towering blows in the horizon: blue whales! We soon caught up with one of them, a good representative of its species, the largest animal that ever lived on this planet. Normal words don’t seem to suffice when you describe a blue whale. A number of more picturesque adjectives immediately come to mind, including some such as “huge,” “immense,” “colossal,” and “gargantuan.” It was a pure joy to watch this magnificent whale slowly swimming around in the completely flat seas and repeatedly raising its huge (see? “huge”) flukes above the surface before deeper dives.
We followed the blue whale for a long time, and eventually moved away; however, we were forced to stop and watch a couple of truly beautiful fin whales. Although the fin whale is the second-largest whale in the world and one of the fastest, this couple was moving very slowly. The glassy appearance of the surface allowed us to see their white-colored right lower jaws as the pair paraded around. Now, if having perfect views of the largest and second-largest animals on the planet before lunch is not an amazing start, then I don’t know what would be!
When the whales finally let us go, we continued sailing towards our evening’s destination, Danzante Island. By means of snorkeling, hiking and kayaking we all had a great time exploring both the land and the submarine world. Danzante is one of the five islands in the Loreto Bay National Park. Declared a protected area by the Mexican government in 1995, the park protects one of the prettiest and most productive areas of the Gulf and today we had more than ample proof of that.
Tomorrow we will experience new places and encounter more creatures, but I’m sure that we will forever remember the wonderful day we had.
The first day of our expedition couldn’t start in a better way: minutes after sunrise we encountered a large group of long-beaked common dolphins. The warm tones of the beautiful low light made the dolphins even prettier than normal. We enjoyed their grace and speed as they swam and jumped all around and everyone on board got very good views of them. That’s an excellent start, if you ask me!
However, not long after breakfast, the National Geographic Sea Bird headed towards a couple of towering blows in the horizon: blue whales! We soon caught up with one of them, a good representative of its species, the largest animal that ever lived on this planet. Normal words don’t seem to suffice when you describe a blue whale. A number of more picturesque adjectives immediately come to mind, including some such as “huge,” “immense,” “colossal,” and “gargantuan.” It was a pure joy to watch this magnificent whale slowly swimming around in the completely flat seas and repeatedly raising its huge (see? “huge”) flukes above the surface before deeper dives.
We followed the blue whale for a long time, and eventually moved away; however, we were forced to stop and watch a couple of truly beautiful fin whales. Although the fin whale is the second-largest whale in the world and one of the fastest, this couple was moving very slowly. The glassy appearance of the surface allowed us to see their white-colored right lower jaws as the pair paraded around. Now, if having perfect views of the largest and second-largest animals on the planet before lunch is not an amazing start, then I don’t know what would be!
When the whales finally let us go, we continued sailing towards our evening’s destination, Danzante Island. By means of snorkeling, hiking and kayaking we all had a great time exploring both the land and the submarine world. Danzante is one of the five islands in the Loreto Bay National Park. Declared a protected area by the Mexican government in 1995, the park protects one of the prettiest and most productive areas of the Gulf and today we had more than ample proof of that.
Tomorrow we will experience new places and encounter more creatures, but I’m sure that we will forever remember the wonderful day we had.
