At Sea and Cabo San Lucas
A gentle sea escorted us as we headed south from Laguna San Ignacio toward Cabo San Lucas. With sun glimmering, we scanned the slow-rolling waters for wildlife, finding Bryde’s whales blowing and rising above the sparkling surface and then descending for a time to come up unpredictably again, as Bryde’s whales have a way of doing. Plenty of common dolphins joined us momentarily on the bow, cavorting with us and then swimming off, and shearwaters and storm petrels danced in their perennially difficult identification puzzles with wing beats spelling out their identities for those patient enough to learn their codes. A mako shark captured our attention as it acrobatically jumped out of the water and then proceeded in what appeared to be a high speed chase. It was a grand day of relaxing under calm seas and waiting to see what the waters would next bring.
We were also entertained intermittently by lectures about photography. Jack Swenson presented a well-illustrated program on taking evocative travel images and then the whole photography gang of Jack, Rikki, and Ralph participated in an informative question-and-answer session. Afternoon brought us a special presentation on videography by Kirk Chubasco, our ship’s videographer.
Late in the afternoon we neared Land’s End, the legendary granite, excuse me, diorite, punctuation at the tip of the Baja Peninsula. And as the ship docked in the busy harbor of Cabo San Lucas, it was good to step on land after our many days at sea. We bussed outside town and took a beautiful sunset walk on a Sonoran desert hiking trail that wound through the desert landscape. Coral vine draped over the greenery casting bright pink blooms in every direction. Oranges, yellows and reds (including the flamboyant fairy duster, today’s photo) were also bright spots of color in this patch of desert apparently in full bloom. We spied a Scott’s oriole, white-winged doves, cactus wrens, verdins and gila woodpeckers and caught quick glimpses of the endemic Xantus’ hummingbird. Swooned by the clear evening air, fragrant with desert sweetness, we trailed back toward the trailhead, and toward an evening of more wildlife in the town of Cabo San Lucas.
A gentle sea escorted us as we headed south from Laguna San Ignacio toward Cabo San Lucas. With sun glimmering, we scanned the slow-rolling waters for wildlife, finding Bryde’s whales blowing and rising above the sparkling surface and then descending for a time to come up unpredictably again, as Bryde’s whales have a way of doing. Plenty of common dolphins joined us momentarily on the bow, cavorting with us and then swimming off, and shearwaters and storm petrels danced in their perennially difficult identification puzzles with wing beats spelling out their identities for those patient enough to learn their codes. A mako shark captured our attention as it acrobatically jumped out of the water and then proceeded in what appeared to be a high speed chase. It was a grand day of relaxing under calm seas and waiting to see what the waters would next bring.
We were also entertained intermittently by lectures about photography. Jack Swenson presented a well-illustrated program on taking evocative travel images and then the whole photography gang of Jack, Rikki, and Ralph participated in an informative question-and-answer session. Afternoon brought us a special presentation on videography by Kirk Chubasco, our ship’s videographer.
Late in the afternoon we neared Land’s End, the legendary granite, excuse me, diorite, punctuation at the tip of the Baja Peninsula. And as the ship docked in the busy harbor of Cabo San Lucas, it was good to step on land after our many days at sea. We bussed outside town and took a beautiful sunset walk on a Sonoran desert hiking trail that wound through the desert landscape. Coral vine draped over the greenery casting bright pink blooms in every direction. Oranges, yellows and reds (including the flamboyant fairy duster, today’s photo) were also bright spots of color in this patch of desert apparently in full bloom. We spied a Scott’s oriole, white-winged doves, cactus wrens, verdins and gila woodpeckers and caught quick glimpses of the endemic Xantus’ hummingbird. Swooned by the clear evening air, fragrant with desert sweetness, we trailed back toward the trailhead, and toward an evening of more wildlife in the town of Cabo San Lucas.
