Suddenly, a huge pod of hundreds of common dolphin headed towards our ship like an invading naval armada.
Sometimes you go looking for wildlife, and sometimes it comes looking for you!
We were aboard UnCruise Safari Endeavour, a small expedition ship with just 48 passengers and a half dozen excellent naturalist guides, traveling from La Paz into the Sea of Cortez for a week of wild life spotting and active adventure. The “critter cruising” we were enjoying was a planned activity. The guides were out on deck with binoculars helping is to spot marine mammals and birds as we cruised the waters of the Sea of Cortez and the Captain was open to taking the vessel wherever we could safely go to see marine mammals. During our week, we didn’t see any whales in the Sea of Cortez, but we saw dolphin nearly every day.
Once the pod of dolphin caught up with us, it became obvious they wanted to use the bow wake of the ship as a “rocket booster” to make swimming in the Sea of Cortez even easier than they already make it look. For almost an hour, our ship felt like one of the pod, with us sailing with this enormous pod of dolphin leaping out of the water and frolicking alongside! One of our guides explained the lack of whales and amazing amount of dolphin we saw as “sometimes the wildlife comes to you and sometimes it doesn’t” This is an excellent mantra for any safari experience and it certainly applied to our time in Baja Sur.
Sometimes the wildlife comes to you, and sometimes it doesn’t.
We chose to use UnCruise in the Sea of Cortez in mid January because we’d hoped to see migrating whales. Many species of whales, some which we’d seen in Alaska on an UnCruise in August 2018, make a migration to the southern Pacific to mate and give birth to their young in warmer waters. (see our UnCruise SE Alaska trip report https://www.goseeittravel.com/uncruise-southeast-alaska click here)
Unfortunately, during our trip, the whales hadn’t got the memo. We traveled by minibus from the Sea of Cortez across the Baja Peninsula to Bahia Magdalena in hopes to see grey whales and their young in the calm waters of the bay where they birth and raise their young. Unfortunately, we didn’t get calm waters, and while the roller coaster ride on the locally operated panga boat was a thrill ride itself, we caught only the merest glimpse of the grey whales.
It was a thrill to surf the waves in an open panga and even more thrilling to catch a glimpse of the grey whale in Bahia Magdalena
Video of the merest glimpse of a grey whale courtesy of KC Deitrick
While we didn’t see many grey whales, Magdalena Bay is also home to some incredible bird life. We were lucky to be on board our panga with the resident bird specialist guide, Marith, from our UnCruise and she was shouting out the names of the birds we were seeing over the noise of the engine, wind and waves. We saw oyster catchers, a bald eagle, pelican, great blue heron, great white heron. (I think our photographer, J Klofft, deserves an extra special shout out for getting these shots from aboard a moving panga, including this shot of an oyster catcher tossing and ‘re-catching’ its prey mid air!!)
In the following days we saw much of the wildlife that attracts visitors and gives the Sea of Cortez it’s nicknames, such as the “World’s Aquarium”. We also found the wildlife proved the maxim, "sometimes the wildlife comes to you” One day we took a kayaking excursion and we were joined by this little fella, a grebe with a bright red eyes and funny little feet paddling behind him, who curiously came right up to our kayaking group.
The wildlife comes to UnCruise guide Wilson and a guest in Espiritu Santo
This little grebe, which according to our guide, Wilson, would usually be part of a flotilla of grebes together, decided to come right to us! We nicknamed him Gary the grebe and he followed our flotilla of kayaks all around the bay and even tried to hop onto our kayak while we were stopped looking at the beautiful rock formations. It seemed he wanted to be part of our flock!
Sometimes the wildlife comes to you, and sometimes it doesn’t.
By the end of the week, guests and guides on the Safari Endeavour had compiled quite a comprehensive of flora and fauna (or signs of wildlife) they had seen during our adventures in the Sea of Cortez.
More to come from our UnCruise in the Sea of Cortez and our time in Los Cabos MX, be sure to follow us on Twitter, or follow our FB page for upcoming posts.