February 4-5, 2025
“How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— l
iving things both large and small.
There the ships go to and fro, and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there."
Psalm 104 24-26
Once again we rented a car. Our plan was to drive north along Baja and see some additional sites. While a bus might have been cheaper, the car would give us more flexibility. Besides, Highway 1, the famous scenic coastal highway, extended all the way down to the tip of Baja so it sounded more beautiful way to travel on the famous road.
It was not beautiful, far from it. We left La Paz and the road took us away from the coast to the center of the peninsula. As we sped northward there was nothing but harsh desert with blowing trash with sickly looking Saguaro cactuses guarding the road. We were not talking about pristine “Dune” desert here. It was more like the place you would take the bodies to be buried in an episode of “Breaking Bad”.
Thankfully, after three hours we turned away from the center and climbed through a mountain pass to once again find the Sea of Cortez. The gorgeous blue waters abutting the sand colored rocky mountains was just what we hoped to find. Our destination was Loreto, a picturesque seaside town founded in 1697 by Jesuits. It was originally the provincial capital, but now mostly hosts tourism.
About a decade ago, the town invested in a major redesign of its city center and boardwalk. The result is a magical downtown pedestrian only space with beautiful old architecture, sculpted landscaping, and great restaurants. Seriously, if you ever consider coming to Mexico make Loreto a priority place to see.
We checked into an eccentrically decorated Hostel run by a pleasant old Mexican couple. The only downside was it had no heat, and the nights dropped to 50 degrees here making things quite chilly. That didn’t matter though. We were here for another adventure. This one had personal meaning for me.
Like many children of my generation I grew up watching the adventures of Jacques Cousteau. The legendary frenchman with his trademark red cap was the most recognizable face in the world during his time. He was instrumental in the development of the Aqualung and would become the first global environmental superstar.
The TV specials, narrated of Rod Serling, followed his legendary ship, Calypso, on adventures around the world. The episodes I liked best were the ones that involved whales. To this day, I remember one about his encounter with a Blue Whale, the largest animal that ever lived.
I was hooked. I gobbled up information about whales. I read books about them and took them with me to school. In the middle of Texas, having a elementary school boy declare he was going to be an oceanographer must have been quite the amusement to my family. The first time I actually saw a whale, like many people, was an Orca in a marine park. Some years later I finally saw Grey Whales in the wild.
But the Blue Whale, that great leviathan remained mythological to me. A fully grown adult weights 135 tons or more. (That is as much as 35 African Elephants) In the 19th century they reached to lengths of 100 feet. Their hearts are the size of a small car and they have a larger brain than our own. Their bodies are impossibly long and slender and quite beautiful. To say they are “Blue” is not really accurate. Their backs are more a mottled gray , but if the sun hits just right it can give off a very slight blue hue. They can reach speeds of 35 knots if needed. They are open ocean whales and do not often come near shore. At least that is what I thought. And by 1970, when I was 9 years old, we managed to kill most of them. We are good at that.
But through the work of Cousteau, and many others, a ban on killing them was finally reached in 1977. Over the last generation, their numbers have increased.
And they are here in Loreto!
Cousteau called the Sea of Cortez the world’s great aquarium. Many whale species are here and the great Blue’s are among them. Today we are going to see if we can find some.
The trip left at dawn. The sea was perfect, no wind, and flat as a lake. We climbed into our long boat with our Irish tour guide and traveled to a bay south of the city around an hour away.
Do not be fooled by the calm water. There are canyons beneath us that reach a depth of 3,000 meters or more. These chasms help form the massive water column where nutrients from the bottom are carried upward to feed plankton. The plankton in turn are fed on by Krill, a tiny shrimp that thrives here in the trillions. And this impossibly small crustacean is the only thing the Blue Whale eats. The amount of biomass that has to be consumed to support such a behemoth is mind boggling.
We began to see spouts, or blows, of whales in the distance. The first animals we saw were Humpback whales. It was one of those encounters you only hear about. One surfaced about 30 yards form the boat on the starboard side. It moved slowly toward us, then gently dived and swam right under our boat. As far as I was concerned, you could have ended the day right there. Colleen and I have never been so close to a whale.
Humpbacks are more common than Blue Whales and more well known. They grow to 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a Blue whale and have characteristic long elegant pectoral fins. They are known for putting on spectacular breaching displays. Thankfully this one didn’t do that or it would have swamped our boat.
Then our guide spotted one. “There is a Blue”, he pointed. And off we sped in that direction.
Now I am no wildlife photographer. All I have is an iPhone and I didn’t know what to expect. So I took way too many pictures. Keep in mind, despite the excessive pictures in this post, I discarded over 200 others. It is hard to capture the majesty of a creature that only shows 1/10 of its mass above water at any given time.
But I wanted to offer a glimpse of the 75 foot animal that was circling us and try to compare it to objects near by so you can get a sense of scale.
Blue Whales are very workmanlike like in their behavior. They have a job to do, feed it’s enormous mass. They are not like the curious Humpbacks or Grey Whales. They show no interest in wanting to interact with humans. They are not aggressive. We are simply inconsequential to them.
They surface, take 7-9 breaths, dive for 10 minutes scooping up krill, then rinse and repeat.
After awhile a second Blue Whale arrived and for brief time, the two giants swam together. It was thrilling.
But there was more, much more.
We had reached the end of our time in the bay and we needed to turn back home. But the waters had more for us to see.
If the Blue Whale was the business major in college, well Humpbacks are the theatre kids.
We ran into a couple of Humpback whales putting on a breeching display. The enormous animal would somehow propel himself out of the water, pirouette in the air with twirling fins, and crash back into to sea.
“So are they just having fun?”, I sheepishly asked the guide. It would be easy to make that mistake.
“No”, the guide answered, “They are trying to get girls.” The noises they generate can be heard for miles and are used to attract females he said.
We watched them loll about the surface and slap the water with their tails or long fins. Apparently all display behavior to get a girl.
We pushed on to the nearby island for a beach picnic. As we approached the shore there was a pod of Common and Bottle Nose Dolphins close to shore with their calves.
Tired, sunburnt, and overwhelmed we finally sailed back into the harbor. A childhood fantasy fulfilled.
It was such a day.
"Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us, the stories you tell….
Like the dolphin who guides you, you bring us beside you
To light up the darkness and show us the way
For though we are strangers in your silent world
To live on the land we must learn from the sea
To be true as the tide and free as a wind swell
Joyful and loving in letting it be…."
John Denver
Great photos! You know John Steinbeck did a lot of work and writing near the Sea of Cortez!