MS National Geographic Sea Bird
Sea of Cortez and Isle San Francisco
Friday, March 19, 2010

    It has been only calm waters the last couple of days – a great relief to a lot of my fellow travelers. It is nice to see the dining room full for meals again. This was another absolutely beautiful day and the calm water makes spotting whale spouts and wildlife so much easier. We began spotting whales right away. The first sightings were of several pods of short-finned pilot whales. If you remember, these are small whales with rather bulbous heads and a prominent dorsal fin. They are very dark, mainly black, but do have some grayish markings on the body near the dorsal, sometimes.

    The whale sightings occupied our time enough that it was decided to delay an island landing until late morning, which was a smart decision since we weren’t that near an island at the time. It wasn’t long, though, before we spotted a pair of blue whales. Image a creature so large that its tongue can weigh more than a fully grown African elephant and a man can stand upright in the chambers of its heart! We delighted in watching these behemoths swim and feed for a long time, so the landing was again postponed for sometime right after lunch.

    But then, we spotted a group of a hundred or more dolphins feeding in the distance, so we directed the ship in that direction. We cruised with the dolphins and photographed like mad as the dolphins played and feed around the ship. Finally, we had to leave in order to get far enough south to be in La Paz by tomorrow morning. As the ship sped up, the dolphins raced to the ship to swim in the pressure wave generated at the bow of the ship. Clearly, the dolphins were having a grand time.

    Late in the afternoon, we finally anchored off of Isle San Francisco. Some of our group kayaked offshore, some went snorkeling, and some of us went ashore to hike in the final minutes of daylight to climb some hills and hopefully capture some photographs.

    Dinner tonight was the farewell supper, so the wine was free and flowing. After a nice steak, all the photo buffs set up their laptop computers in the lounge and each ran a continuous slideshow of some of their favorite photos from the trip. Everyone strolled around the room and delighted in reliving our last week captured differently by each of us.

    Tonight we will continue to cruise south back to La Paz, arriving early tomorrow morning. Following breakfast, we will disembark for the last time. I’ll stroll around La Paz with some of the others for a couple of hours. We will then have an early, catered brunch in town and then head out to the airport. It’s nice that returning from this expedition will be easy and quick – just a two and a half hour flight to LAX and an easy drive home to Irvine. This has been a great expedition and I look forward to my next visit to Baja.