Los Titeres, Hull Canal & La Entrada
We started our final rounds of whale watching with a windy but sunny morning. Many of the gentle gray giants were found traveling slowly in a section of the canal close to La Florida, the gray whale nursery, alongside the long strip of Magdalena Island. As we progressed in the nicely rocking waters on our Zodiacs, varied formations of seabirds, especially cormorants, continuously passed by, distracting us from watching the whales. “Seabirds are also phenomenal”, I told to myself, breaking the hypnotizing effect the sea and gray whales caused in our minds after a time of staying among them.
Then I noticed the deep dark green of the mangroves around, the brilliant gold color of the morning light falling over the sand dunes, the fish jumping at the surface of the water, one or two pangas floating motionless in the distance, the deepness of the blue, clear sky, and the pleasant company we had. “These are things that we usually don’t think of when we observe mother gray whales and their calves, but they are here for us to enjoy too,” was my final thought before returning to pay attention to the blows and big bodies of these fascinating marine mammals.
The time seemed to stop in Magdalena Lagoon as some whales started to be active. A baby gray whale, probably three weeks of age, suddenly began to breach many times, giving us the opportunity to take photos. Another baby, not very far away, played on the back of its mom, rolling over and sliding slowly along her endless mottled back.
A few minutes later, a cow and calf reached us and mother gray allowed us to touch her little offspring as they dove and swam around our rubber boats! What a way to finish our stay in Los Titeres.
Once back to the National Geographic Sea Bird we attended a couple of talks given by two world luminaries: one by Gil Grosvenor and the second by Sylvia Earle. Everybody on the ship was caught by the ideas, experiences, feelings and words of these two fantastic human beings and the extraordinary work that, in different disciplines, they have done for the spread of knowledge and conservation of our world.
We finally sailed south in the Hull Canal for Santa Maria Bay, and hiked again on the wonderful sand dunes. A plethora of small creatures, like clams, hermit crabs, tube worms, beetles, scorpions and tiny flowers, as well as bones, sand dollars, empty shells and the Pacific Ocean were the final gifts from nature in our fascinating voyage in the Gulf of California and Magdalena Bay.
