We all on National Geographic Sea Bird woke up this morning in the quiet waters of the Magdalena coastal lagoon, in a section called Los Títeres, just five miles south of the small town and port Adolfo Lopez Mateos. There, and after breakfast, our guests and natural history staff had excursions to the magnificent dunes of the Magdalena Island and, for the first time in this voyage, to whale watch. On the dunes, besides the wonderful pioneer plants that thrive in this harsh environment (like sea purselane, sand verbena, unicorn plant and evening primeroses) there were lizards, jackrabbits, and coyotes too. A couple of coyotes smelled the leather portions of our cameras and, to avoid damage, we took extra care.
On the beach we found a pretty collection of skulls of common dolphin, loggerhead turtle, California sea lion, and seabirds, as well as huge numbers of diverse shells. In the canal, during the whale watching rounds, we not only contemplated the magnificent giants, but also found delight observing the great numbers of birds, like brown pelicans, frigatebirds (some of them stealing food caught by other birds!), cormorants, geese, terns, gulls and, as a bonus, flocks of western greebes, and bottlenose dolphins.
The gray whales that we encountered were all females and their calves. Some were just traveling fast and passed by us. Others, more curious, stopped, and approached our rubber boats at different moments. A big female, among them, was the number one! She pushed all boats with her gigantic rostrum, and allowed her baby to play around us. The baby, almost a month old, was in fact playful and confident, and in many opportunities rolled over its mom’s back and lifted the funny head above the water just next to the boats. Multiple times, hands stretched out to reach this wonderful, endlessly-petted calf. Several thousand photos were produced during this brief encounter. In the afternoon we repeated the excursions, and the whales were not as responsive as in the morning, but everybody enjoyed those moments of solitude and quietness of the lagoon, with the dunes on the background and the whales living their daily lives in front of us, without any disturbance. The day finished with a Mexican Fiesta Dinner that featured cochinita pibil, pork meat in Mayan tradition, crowned with a delightful tres leches cake.
