Magdalena Bay, Baja California Sur & the Pacific Ocean
I loved this day! It was bookended by whales….beginning with gray whales in the mist and ending with humpback whales in the sunset. Truly awesome.
National Geographic Sea Bird was anchored overnight just south of Boca de Solidad, the entrance to upper Magdalena Bay. Yesterday afternoon we had some wonderful encounters with gray whale mothers and calves on the north side of the Boca and our plan for the morning was to return to that area for our final outing with the whales.
However, during the night the fog set in quite heavily and some of us were concerned that we would not be able to find the whales among the mists (and, incidentally, find our way back to the ship!). But with modern devices like portable GPSs we made our way across the open access to the Pacific and whales just appeared out of the fog. It was so mysterious and delightful to have them emerge hauntingly from the gray of water and sky and to hear them blowing their mighty spouts somewhere out in the mist.
And what encounters we had. I didn’t see a single face without a smile on it all morning, everyone ecstatic with their experience being in touching distance of 40-ton whale mothers and their 2-ton offspring. It really does change the way one sees and experiences the world. So our morning was spent in the company of gray whales, learning their ways and them learning ours.
By mid-morning we were weighing anchor and heading south in the northern lagoon complex inside the barrier island of Magdalena in warm airs and calm waters. We counted 20 gray whale cow/calf pairs along the way and a number of small groups of bottlenose dolphins came to the ship to get a free ride on the bow. Wonderful birds lined the shore and a lone coyote stalked prey along the mudflats at the base of the mangroves.
Our transit of Magdalena Island took us until mid-afternoon and we exited the protected waters of Magdalena Bay through huge rafts of seabirds including Brandt’s and double-crested cormorants, Hermann’s and California gulls, and brown pelicans. There were also a number of gray whales spouting us a farewell as we left the bay.
The Pacific was truly pacific…that is Spanish for calm. As we rocked gently on our way southward along the outer coast of Isla Santa Margarita, there were the occasional spouts of humpback whales and wonderful sightings of Xantus's murrelets and black-vented shearwaters, two seabirds that can only be seen in the open ocean. Just before sunset a mother and large baby humpback whale began breaching and continued to breach and breach and breach all the way to sunset time. And this was no ordinary sunset; it ended with a stunning green flash as the upper part of the sun gave the horizon of the ocean a goodnight kiss. Days just don’t get any better than this and some of us were talking on deck after the sun went down of how much we would have loved to share this day with our loved ones back home. How much better the world would be if everyone were as lucky as we were to have experienced this day together in this way.
