San Ignacio lagoon and open Pacific
When six thousand seabirds take flight in San Ignacio Lagoon, they don’t block out the sun, but you do need an umbrella. Alfred Hitchcock would have been pleased. The millions of sardines are not. Diving pelicans, plummeting from the sky like Icarus, Royal terns lancing the water like bolts from a crossbow, cormorants barely taking the time to touch the surface before plunging into the emerald depths. All spiraling anticlockwise like a cyclone of feathers that bite. Conversely swarming birds spiral clockwise in the southern hemisphere, much like the drains in the bathtub and ants before a rainstorm. The forces at play here baffle the mind.
But the Grey whales upstage all the beasts in the firmament hands down. Today was our last chance to go out and frolic and laugh with the gentle giants. Their skin is coloured like the finest leaden marble layered with brushstrokes of plaster white; Michelangelo would have been pleased. The texture is(yes, we certainly did touch them!) like a wet soccer ball and kissable like a newly bathed baby(did that too!). Our photo expedition to the lagoons was a giga and giggle byte success.
We steamed south in the afternoon heading for Cabo San Lucas 30 hours away; ‘time to download and review our images. Pelagic species like Black-vented shearwater, Cassin’s Auklet and Red Phalarope were now our traveling companions. But the “thrill of it all” was a powder-white Tropicbird, with its lipstick-red bill at one end and 16 inch streamers of feathers at the other. Gwen Stefani would kill for that look!
When six thousand seabirds take flight in San Ignacio Lagoon, they don’t block out the sun, but you do need an umbrella. Alfred Hitchcock would have been pleased. The millions of sardines are not. Diving pelicans, plummeting from the sky like Icarus, Royal terns lancing the water like bolts from a crossbow, cormorants barely taking the time to touch the surface before plunging into the emerald depths. All spiraling anticlockwise like a cyclone of feathers that bite. Conversely swarming birds spiral clockwise in the southern hemisphere, much like the drains in the bathtub and ants before a rainstorm. The forces at play here baffle the mind.
But the Grey whales upstage all the beasts in the firmament hands down. Today was our last chance to go out and frolic and laugh with the gentle giants. Their skin is coloured like the finest leaden marble layered with brushstrokes of plaster white; Michelangelo would have been pleased. The texture is(yes, we certainly did touch them!) like a wet soccer ball and kissable like a newly bathed baby(did that too!). Our photo expedition to the lagoons was a giga and giggle byte success.
We steamed south in the afternoon heading for Cabo San Lucas 30 hours away; ‘time to download and review our images. Pelagic species like Black-vented shearwater, Cassin’s Auklet and Red Phalarope were now our traveling companions. But the “thrill of it all” was a powder-white Tropicbird, with its lipstick-red bill at one end and 16 inch streamers of feathers at the other. Gwen Stefani would kill for that look!
