Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Baja Whale Watching

Gray whales migrate up and down the west coast from Alaska to Baja. Last time we were here in Baja we didn't get a chance to see them so this time we made a point of it. Loreto, where we stayed, is on the inland side of the Baja peninsula but the gray whales are on the outer Pacific side. We booked through Arturo's for a day trip to Adolfo Lopez Mateos. It's about a 2 hour drive each way. We went out in a small boat for two hours to see the whales. It was a little expensive with just the two of us but it was nice not to have a crowded boat like some we saw.

We had a beautiful sunny, calm day and the whales were fantastic. We were lucky and saw lots of them and took a ton of pictures. Most of them weren't that great but a few were presentable. One problem I had was that the automatic focus had trouble with the water and if it couldn't focus it would refuse to shoot. So half the time I turned off the automatic focus but then I had to guess where they whales would surface to preset the focus. Needless to say, I didn't always guess correctly. You'll notice a number of the pictures aren't very sharp.

The last two pictures are from one of our snorkeling trips. I'm not sure what kind of whale it is. Someone said humpback but I have no idea if that's correct. There are also blue and fin whales in the area. We were lucky to see a blue whale on another snorkeling trip (but no pictures). Pretty cool to see the largest animal ever to live.

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