Into Magdalena Bay: La Entrada, Hull Canal & Ashore on Isla Magdalena
Last night we left the dramatic rocks at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula, and traveled north in the Pacific Ocean. This morning at daybreak we were several miles south of Magdalena Bay. The morning was clear and beautiful. By noon we were passing through La Entrada, the deep southern entrance to Magdalena Bay. Mountains on Isla Santa Margarita and Isla Magdalena border the entrance, and here we had our first sightings of gray whales. We saw their distinctive heart-shaped blows, and mottled, gray tail flukes. With no dorsal fin, the gray whales look very different from humpback whales. Berit gave a presentation about gray whales to prepare us for our next 2 days of whale watching.
The bay narrowed as we headed north, and we took on our local pilot Alejandro, who knows Hull Canal well, and has marked it himself with buoys. As our ship navigated up the narrow channel at low tide, we found countless birds wading in the shallows by the mangroves: tri-colored herons, egrets, whimbrels, ibises. Pacific loons, cormorants, and royal and Caspian terns fed in the rich green waters. Coyotes walked on the mudflats! An osprey flew overhead with a fish in its talons. Bottlenose dolphins briefly swam in our bow wave for a free ride, and we leaned over the railing and smiled from ear to ear as we watched them. We were traveling north alongside a 60 mile-long barrier island in a shallow channel in a true desert environment, and it teemed with life!
Late in the afternoon, we arrived at the northern end of Isla Magdalena, and we went ashore for walks on the dunes and along the beach. The sand had the texture of talcum powder – it felt impossibly soft. Winds carried endless sand grains and continuously reshaped the dunes, and waves left gifts of beautiful shells over miles of ocean beach. We walked over, then jumped off the perfect dunes, and admired the countless, colorful shells. Sunset over the Pacific Ocean ended with an exclamation point of a little ‘green flash.’
