As dawn began we were already in the immediate vicinity of Cabo San Lucas. The morning was fresh and the city of Cabo San Lucas was twinkling in the dark. To our surprise we began to see a great number of small boats leave the bay and head out to the west. Sport fishermen looking for bill fish! Hundreds of them, all going in the same direction.
We approached the famous Los Frailes, (the Friars), and slowly crept up to that famous arch, at Land’s End. There is a rock immediately to the left, with a number of California sea lions, who serenaded all the time we were there. After hundreds of whirrs and clicks of so many cameras, we turned, backed out, and proceeded to San Jose del Cabo, the original “Cape.” En route we saw a few humpback whales, a prelude of what was to come later. The marina where we docked is new, well-protected, and easily accessible. Onto coaches and into town, where some of us went to the birds at a small estuary, enjoying a good number of these plumed friends. The other coach took us downtown (only three blocks away from the birders). Again, some of us went direct to a glass blowing shop, where we saw a man make a lovely glass whale. And two ladies of our group had the opportunity of blowing a big glass balloon!
A while later we were all back on our boat and enjoyed a good lunch, as we set sail again off to the east, to that underwater seamount called “the Gorda Banks.” And then we began seeing humpback whales, all over. A good portion of the afternoon was spent observing these incredible behemoths, males fighting males to be the best suitor to the oestral females. Breaches, pectoral fins flapping, great splashes everywhere. On and on we went, following ever more small groups of these whales, till it became too dark to see them any more. And then we set off into the Gulf of California, north, north!
