This morning started in a wonderful way, with the full moon setting behind one of the most majestic sections of the Baja California peninsula, the El Mechudo range. The multicolored layers of volcanic ashes were clearly visible as the huge moon slowly set, just to glow with beautiful pastel colors as the sun rose a few minutes later in the opposite direction. Not a bad start, but then a couple of blows ignited everyone on deck, as two humpback whales surfaced to our port side. Almost immediately one of them breached twice out of the water, causing an explosion of camera clicks and excited shouting. All that before breakfast!
We encountered a few more humpback whales a bit later as National Geographic Sea Bird made her way towards San Francisco Island, where we spent a great day. Kayakers explored the gorgeous half-moon bay and snorkelers enjoyed its very clear waters. Numerous big schools of half-beak, Mexican goatfish and other species surrounded those of us that got into the water. Purser Shawn and I went scuba diving in the same area to get underwater video to share with everybody on board; from the very beginning we knew that this was going to be a very pleasant dive: the water was particularly clear and we clearly saw the bottom from the surface 40 feet below. We encountered and filmed many different kinds of reef fishes and invertebrates, including crown-of-thorns sea stars, spinster wrasses, bumphead damselfishes, synapted sea cucumbers, and huge schools of spotttail grunts, blue-and-gold snappers, and Mexican goatfishes. Several tiny fishes, like the saber-toothed blenny, the redhead, and blue-banded gobies, showed themselves an allowed me film them.
During the afternoon we continued our explorations of the island and hikers, snorkelers and photographers climbed hills, visited the salt deposits made by local fishermen and did some tide-pooling. Later, we enjoyed an excellent dinner ashore and admired the moonrise as another beautiful day in Baja California came to an end.
