Whale watching at Los Titeres
As soon as the sun rose this morning and warmed up land and ocean, the strong night wind abated and left calm waters in Magdalena Lagoon, in the area known as Los Titeres (The Puppets), where we were anchored. Right after breakfast we loaded our Zodiacs for a full day of whale watching. Once on the mirror-like sea, the boats split up and followed different groups of whales, mainly cow and calf pairs.
Every whale- watching party had onboard one of the permit holders for this activity, the “pangueros”: local fishermen from the town of Lopez Mateos. They provided useful information about the gray whale situation at this location, enriched by interesting facts about what they fish for in the summer, and so on.
During the whole morning we enjoyed a lot of whale activity: some babies were very playful, breaching and rolling on their mom’s backs. Others were curious enough to approach our Zodiacs and dive and swim around or underneath them. Some cows and calves also displayed what we call “friendly” behavior: they repeatedly put their long “noses,” equivalent to the rostrum in other mammals, on the sides of the boats and rubbed their gigantic bodies against them, or simply put their heads up and out of the water, as though waiting for a petting hand.
In the distance, passing single pregnant cows were followed by bottle-nosed dolphins while long flying lines of cormorants adorned the deep blue sky. Western gulls, pelicans, white ibises and other shore birds, on the sandy flats next to the mangroves, accompanied local fishermen as they gathered snails and pen shell for local consumption.
Probably thousands of photographs were taken, such was the excitement produced by the whales as they performed. By noon, we returned to the National Geographic Sea Bird for lunch. We continued the whale watching, as well as hikes on the dunes, the entire afternoon.
It was a day for intense and profound reflections about the natural world, as we were witness to the intimacy of the life of these giant creatures. Many guests and naturalists commented about the “tameness” of the whales, the confidence they showed to humans, the tolerance and other feelings they awoke inside us. For sure, many aboard the ship won’t be the same again; such was the change the gray whales caused inside our minds and hearts.
This day of perfect whale watching finished with abundant Mexican-style food and music performed by Los Coyotes de Magdalena.
