Searching for marine animals and Isla Danzante
WOW! A very generous day! Circulating east of Isla del Carmen, we sighted a big group of bottlenose dolphins. They were given away from afar by a group of marine birds flying in circles in that area. Everybody was enjoying some small fish this morning. As soon as our ship approached these marvelous common dolphins, many of them swam into our bow and began a crazy, joyous game of bow riding. Five, six or more at a time would take up position exactly in front of our bow and enjoy the free ride! Many of the dolphins are known to even bow ride large whales and submarines!! We enjoyed them a good while, and eventually left them to their own breakfast, sailing on to another group sighted even further away. These happened to be common dolphins, in an even larger group, also accompanied by sea birds. Cameras overworked this morning, trying to get everything on memory! Suddenly a whale was sighted, quite distant. So we slowly sailed in the new direction, only to never see the animal again. Ugh!
By this time lunch time approached and we soon had that taken care of, as we were approaching our afternoon date with Isla Danzante. Here we absolutely enjoyed kayaking in the azure, aquamarine, bluish and greenish waters of a lovely small bay, as well as a good snorkel afternoon, where a big number of tropical and subtropical fish were encountered, as well as a varied set of invertebrates, including gorgonian fans, sea anemones, sea cucumbers and the ubiquitous sea stars. Short hikes were undertaken into the more desert environment, as it has not rained in at least six months. Quite a day!
