Magdalena Bay, Baja California Sur and the Pacific Ocean
An incredibly beautiful sunrise found the National Geographic Sea Bird heading southward in the upper Magdalena Bay complex, from our overnight anchorage at Boca de Soledad toward our anchorage this morning at a place the locals call Titeres. Fog came and went as we slipped by the spectacular sand dunes on our right and the lush mangroves to our left.
We spotted 17 mother/young gray whale pairs along the way, along with some bottlenose dolphins that rode our bow. After breakfast we boarded the Zodiacs to explore the southern portion of the upper lagoon and seek out more gray whales. We found pairs heading slowly to and fro in the glassy morning water, doing exactly what gray whales do in the early morning…swimming to and fro.
After a while, one of the Zodiacs located one of the friendly gray whales that, for some reason, love to fraternize with humans….and the party began. For the rest of the morning this pair of amazing whales played with our Zodiacs and with each and every one of us. Mother mostly lay placidly on the surface, periodically breathing out explosively and inhaling immediately thereafter, while the youngster went from boat to boat spraying us with its blow, pushing us around like a bathtub toy and seeking our attention in a variety of ways. Sometimes, she (and it was a she) would roll on her side and look us straight in the eye and it was completely clear that there was someone in there looking back at us. Who could not be moved by this? What an incredible experience. Then when she came closer to accept our petting and kissing, she would sometimes allow us to rub inside her mouth, massage her baleen plates and even pet her very soft and squishy tongue. And she came back and back and then back again to receive us. Meanwhile mother would drop by a Zodiac now and then and let us pet her but mostly lay motionless or swam slowly nearby. It’s very hard to describe the experience of being in a tiny rubber boat playing with a two-ton whale in her own environment, with her 40-ton mother seeming to encourage the entire interaction and often floating under the Zodiac and giving it a pleasant nudge.
Eventually we just had to pull ourselves away and leave this gracious pair to their own whale business and go on about our human business…which happened to be an outdoor lunch on the upper deck!
The rest of the day we made our way ever southward, bird watching in the Canal de Soledad, cruising through the main part of Magdalena Bay proper and exiting through La Entrada into the open Pacific. As I write this, we are gently rolling along the west coast of the Baja Peninsula toward the adventures that await us tomorrow in the Cape Region. Many of us will spend much or bits of this night with dreams of our extraordinary visit with the gray whales, perhaps changing our whole idea of our relationship with our planetary co-inhabitants forever.
