Morning found us watching a glorious sunrise, off between the Friar’s Rocks of Cabo San Lucas. This is Finisterra, the “End of the World!” Awhile earlier we had passed “Cabo Falso,” the False Cape with its abandoned lighthouse, but with a navigational aid further up, warning the world that this is the place they were looking for. Among a fleet of small and medium-sized sport fishing boats, we slowly approached the famous arch of Cabo San Lucas, where we stayed awhile enjoying the enormous granite rocks, with a good number of frigates and boobies, and yes, cormorants. A smaller flat rock at water’s level had a few California sea lions. Arf, arf!
We slowly turned around and started heading for San Jose del Cabo, where the old Spanish mission is. Along the way, we watched a good number of humpback whales, down from the coasts of British Columbia and northern United States, the females for pupping and the males for finding an estral female to send their genes to the future. There were fighting males, and other breaching behemoths. This is real whale-watching!
And so, we arrived to our morning destination, San Jose del Cabo. Here we divided into two groups, one to bird-watch at the estero (estuary), and the other to the center of the town. Here we visited the blown-glass factory (in reality a small locality), where we watched an artist make an elephant in less than a minute! Fantastic animal. And then free time for shopping or visiting diverse places in town.
The birds were very interesting, as we saw a great number of them, including the endemic Xanthus’ hummingbird.
Out of the marina and on to Gorda Banks, a shallow sea mount in the direction of our travels east. Here we again saw many interesting behaviors of humpback whales, and stayed there a good while. But the wind had picked up a little, and we sailed onto and into the Gulf of California and tomorrow’s destination, Isla San Jose.
During the early afternoon William set up an interesting table with different Mexican food articles, including chocolate and vanilla, very much Mexican articles! It was a delicious and wonderful day.
