Whale of a good time

Hey all,

Currently on the plane from Cabo to San Diego after a fun filled couple of days.  Let’s see…we last left off after diving and a day of relaxation.  Thursday we relaxed a little more although that included walking around town for about 10-12 miles.  Fun fact about La Paz, the sidewalks suck.  Really, it’s detrimental to your health to gawk while talking because the sidewalks are not nice, flat creations.  Rather than change height every few feet, sometimes go away only to come back again, have various obstructions in the way.  Pay attention is what I am saying.  Another fun tidbit is most of the corners have handicapped access ramps onto the sidewalk.  They may not lead to anything a wheelchair can make it through (including those suddenly increasing heights, plants directly in the way, and sudden bouts of dirt) but they ARE compliant with whatever handicapped regulations are out there.

Really a couple of nice, mild but sunny days to laze away and explore the various areas of La Paz….and shop for trinkets…everyone loves trinkets, no?  Saw a really cool painting of a whale tail too but it was large and I didn’t want to have to deal with shipping and all that craziness…actually, I don’t even know how much it was…oh well.

Friday, Stacy and I left Lance and Amy to their own activities and hopped aboard a fully loaded 15 passenger van to go see some whales.  It was a 4 hour trip along windy, bumpy roads, but we got to the area around time for lunch which was a pretty decent set of quesadillas and fish tacos.  After that, we went to the boats to go see some whales.

I have to be honest and admit I was picturing a bay so full of whales that one could conceivably hop from back to back across the water it was so full of whale flesh.  This was not the case and really, it was a whacky thought to begin with.  Instead it was a nice large bay and you had to hunt a bit to find the whales.  But find them we did…moms with their calves teaching them how to be a good whale.  We found a pair shortly after we left the docks…actually, I should say, eagle eyed Stacy found a pair and we followed along with them for a while.  The guides tell you to splash the water because it attracts the calves over.  While this calf was breaching in the air, it didn’t seem inclined to come over to be petted.  In fact, after a brief time, the mom and calf went under for long enough for us to search for more.  Click to embiggen

 

Breach

Breach again

Calf close to the boat checking us out

More we found!  We went to the mouth of the bay and, although the water was pretty choppy, we found whales galore.  Really, any direction you could look, you could see whale-sign (at this point, the geek in me would like to reference Dune and “worm sign” but I will try to refrain….Mua-dib!).  This mainly consisted of sprays as they came up to breath, but you could also see mom and kid pairs galore.  Eventually we came up to a pair where the kid was interested in our boat and Stacy’s splashing (she was the official splasher of our boat).  I would like to say, at this point, it is very exciting then all of the people in a 16-20 foot boat go to one side of it trying to touch a whale.  “Oh shit” may have been heard a time or two. 

 

Everyone on one side of the boat...the whale is here!

Baby and mom on the other side of the boat

Yep...right there.

But touch the little (probably 15-ish feet) thing we did!  It was sooo cool!  Can’t even really describe it other than with what one of our fellow passengers said as “smooth and squishy”.  The skin was smooth but since it has blubber right below it, it was sort of squishy too.  Just an all-around awesome experience!!

The accommodations did leave a bit to be desired.  They were brick buildings with two rooms sharing a wall…a thin wall and then the bed was made up of springs and had to be one of the most uncomfortable things I have been on in a while.  Not a lot of sleep to be had.  Plus it was Friday night and while we might have been tuckered out, the town was not and we could hear the music playing late into the night. 

On the other hand, we went back out for a couple of hours the next morning and had more interactions with baby whales.  I cannot recommend this one enough…if you are into whales, that is.  For sure it was great.  Unfortunately the movies I took are too large for this...but they are awesome...instead, here are some more pictures 

 

What our boat looked like (everyone on one side)...but the whales are right there!

Calf teasing everyone..."I'm right here"

Calf at our boat, laying on it's side...mom in the background hovering protectively

After a 4 hour ride back to La Paz, it was out to dinner and then an early evening in bed to be able to leave early this morning.  A two hour bus ride to Cabo airport and then a wait for a couple of hours until our flight left.  One bright note was the flight attendant on our second flight was a diver and knew Stacy through her boyfriend (also a diver) and free drinks were had!  Yay Alaska! 

Had a good time, but now back to the real world.  Hope all are doing great!  It’s our time, the people’s time!

Love to all  

Jim

La Paz is awesome!

Hey all from La Paz, Mexico!! 

Stacy and I are down here with a couple of her friends (Lance and Amy) to do a little diving and whale watching.  The dives are out of the way and the whale watching is to come so it’s a perfect time to send out a little update.

We flew down to Cabo San Lucas Saturday morning through San Jose.  Nothing too interesting about the flights except we had a couple of flight attendants who were on  their way to vacation sitting next to us on both flights and boy did they get hooked up on the booze and food.  Not complaining at all and I totally understand it, but it was interesting to see the number of minis that were handed to them on that first flight from Portland.  Alaska Air flight attendants take care of their own!  Go Alaska!

Once we got into Cabo, it was a 2-ish hour ride to La Paz, which is north of Cabo on the baja on the inside (the Sea of Cortez side as compared to Pacific Ocean).  We got to the shuttle terminal in La Paz and then hopped a taxi to the hotel which is new enough that no one knows how to get there.  Luckily I had printed out the booking info that included the address so the taxi driver was able to drop us off.  We are about half a mile from the main drag (read restaurants, bars, boardwalk, etc.) but right on the water so there is no complaining.  Plus walking into town is helping with the cervezas that we have been consuming.

That first night we did a street meat taco stand and the 2 tacos al Pastor that I had were awesome.  They came with plenty of meat, onion, some relatively spicy salsa and a healthy layer of guac.  Mmmm good! 

On Sunday, we walked around town…about 11 miles total travel…and checked out what there was to do.  The boardwalk was pretty nice and we stopped at a seafood place on it for lunch.  I ordered octopus sauted in garlic, Stacy had coconut shrimp, Lance  had these bacon and cheese wrapped shrimp and Amy had lobster with garlic (2 tails….damn good).  The waiter convinced us to try some clams which are a local delicacy.  He didn’t say they were raw…cleaned of all the grit and everything, but still raw on the half shell.  You squeeze a little lime (and watch the still semi-living flesh pull in) add some salt (more movement), a few shakes of soy sauce, a couple of shakes of hot sauce and use your fork to swirl it around and then suck it down.  Sort of chewy, but not bad!  It was pretty tasty to be honest.  The octopus I had was also all kinds of awesome.  That’s 2 meals in a row that were good!

Monday we went diving with sea lions and then to a wreck dive.  The sea lion dive was only to about 15 feet or so.  We basically sat under a sardine swarm and the inquisitive sea lions would come down and check us out.  One of them started gnawing on my fins.  Then it left, but later I felt a pull on my regulator (the part that goes into the mouth and lets you breath) which was not cool, but then it started lightly biting my arm of the wetsuit before returning to my fins.  Pretty cool!  As equally amazing, you would look around and see birds there underwater trying to get to the sardines too!  15 feet down!  Super fun dive.  The wreck dive was ok and we did a lot of pass throughs (going into the various chambers of the wreck) but overall it was just an ok dive.  Remember: Click to embiggen

It's a bird...it's a...wait...wtf...it's a bird!!!

The majestic sea lion...I just think this was a cool shot :)

Those are my fins the little bugger is gnawing on.

Sardine swarm above Lance

A close up of the bugger that was gnawing on my fins...cute, isn't it?

Ropes still whole on this wreck

A view out the window from the inside of the wreck.  Tons of fish

Scorpion fish hanging out on the boat.  Very poisonous...but they don't attack or anything

After those dives, however, it was time to hunt down some whale sharks that we could go snorkeling with.  They don’t dive with whale sharks here mainly because the way you do it is drive around in the boat until you find one, slip into the water with snorkel and fins trying not to spook it and then swim along with it for as long as it lets you.  If it gets away, then you go back to the boat, get back on and have it take you up in front of the shark again…repeat until you are too cold to stay in or too exhausted from paddling your fins keeping up with the thing. 

We found a “small” one that they estimated was around 24 feet long and got in.  I only took my camera on the first jaunt cause it took too much focus to keep up to take photos.  We dropped and swam 3 times over about 20 minutes until we were tired and the winds were bad enough that it was getting choppy and we needed to head in.  Super duper cool though.  Can’t recommend enough!!

Hell yeah!  The "little" whale shark we found.  Eat your heart out, Sophia!!  This was awesome!!

Yesterday Stacy and I did 2 more dives while Lance and Amy stayed back.  We went out to an underwater mount where hammerheads were supposed to congregate.  They had said there was a 50/50 chance we would see hammerheads since it was the tail end of the season and, based off the dive we did, I am not sure they even really tried.  It was a cool dive, don’t get me wrong…lots of stuff to see, tons of eels, fish and what not, but the stories I had read about people who did see them talked about swimming out into the blue (deep water) to find them while we basically swam from one uprising to the next and the bottom was visible the entire time.  Oh well.  Some other time. 

We did have some pretty cool spottings on the boat ride to and from the dives yesterday.  On the way out, we saw humpback whales breach and blow air up.  On the way between dives 1 and 2 (another wreck dive that wasn’t that great), we saw 2 schools…packs?  Whatever of dolphins.  The first was the common California variety and they had little bitty young dolphins in the pack…little bitty being 2-3 feet long.  The other pack was of bottle nosed dolphins which were much larger.  Really pretty awesome thing things you see on the boat rides to the even cooler dives.

Zebra Moray out swimming around...you can probably guess why it got that name

Green Moray eel

The bottlenosed dolphins...crap reaction times from me prevent you from seeing more of them surfacing...but there are a few fins there.  It was pretty cool!

Little puffer fish...unpuffed

In the middle is a little sea snake or something.  I had to slowly sneak up on it to even get this pic

A couple of little anemone.

There's Stacy with her camera rig.  I swear I saw her take a selfie under water!

Another scorpion fish hanging out

This is a jeweled moray.  Only got the snout because it was a little shy of the camera

So far today, we have walked around, restocked on water and beer and are now relaxing by the pool.  Tomorrow is going to be another relaxing day and then Friday, Stacy and I are headed to the Pacific side for grey whale watching.  That should be awesome and hopefully I will have cool pictures for you!

Until then, love to all.  It’s our time, the people’s time!

Jim