Touching whales

It feels a bit strange to follow a post about swimming with giant whale sharks with touching grey whales but we had a pretty amazing three days. The best part is before the whale sharks we were swimming with sea lions again at Los Ilotas, so really this that been a pretty amazing couple of days.

We had to drive Kolby’s parents to Loreto for their flight home. It is a 4 hour drive from La Paz to Loreto, and their flight left at 2:50. If we left La Paz at 5 am we would have just enough time to stop by the small fishing town of Puerto Adolfo Mateos Lopez to visit the Grey Whales. From January to March these giants come into the protected estuaries on the Pacific side of the Baja to birth and nurse their babies. There are three places on the coast where they are, and from what I read Puerto Adolfo was the quietest of the three.

The entire experience was fantastic, we arrived early, about 10 am and pulled into the parking lot which was mostly empty. We walked up to the first booth and booked a panga for the hour for $1000 pesos (it didn’t matter how many people were going on the panga). We saw the first whales within five minutes. A mama and her baby, cruising along. Sometimes the bay would come up beside its mama, sometime it would come up on her back and roll off. We didn’t think it could get much better until we met Olivia. Olivia is a mama whale who loves to visit boat for pats and rubs, and baby would come up for the rubs too.

Touching a whale in the wild because she was actively seeking the attention was breath taking. She was so big that the boat would rise and fall with her breath. We were all mesmerized.

By the time we were back in the car the place was filling up. Most of the tourists were Mexican, evident by the music blaring on the speakers. The whale watching industry has brought some jobs and cash to this sleepy little fish town, and they were embracing it. We saw amazing whale murals on the school walls as be left town and continued the journey to Loreto.