Whale Trip Five – Back to Baja with our husbands for Nikki’s 40th.

The gray whales stole our hearts and we had to share this amazing experience with our husbands. We went back to Baja with Orca Network again. This is a fundraiser for them but going with whale experts is always more fun because they have so many whale stories to share. So, when you are not out looking for whales, you are talking about them. My idea of a perfect vacation.

Our husbands were totally impressed with the location because we could see whales blow from our dining area upon arrival. The first day is all about getting settled in. You don’t go out on the boats until the following morning after breakfast. I thought, if they are impressed now, wait until tomorrow.

We ate breakfast and out we went to search for “friendlies”. Not all gray whales in the lagoon are “friendlies”. Some want nothing to do with you and others want to hang out. But one thing for sure, you will see whales and lots of them even if they don’t approach the boat. It is incredible how many large whales with babies are in this lagoon at a time. Everywhere you look you can see a whale blow somewhere. We did get lucky our first day and our husbands were kind of awe struck.

They couldn’t believe you can touch and play with a whale like that and that the whale initiated the encounter. Every boat trip out we experienced friendlies, saw bottlenose dolphins, and sea turtles, it was amazing, but one trip was epic.

When a boat finds a friendly they share the info, so the grays have several boats to interact with, so you must share the whales. But this one day our boat captain decided to take a chance and head out further and further into the lagoon. When you spend more time traveling to get to the whales there is potentially less time to spend with them. But what happened next will stay with me forever. There was a beautiful lady who I connected with on this trip. While heading out into the lagoon she told me that her mother had recently passed away and she had her ashes with her. She intended to scatter them in the ocean. She shared this experience with me. We held hands and said a little something for her mom. I was moved that she wanted to share this with me. It meant a lot to me. Shortly after we scattered the ashes, a gray surfaced by our boat and someone yelled whale. We stopped our boat to see if it wanted to play with us and it most certainly did. The mother was with her baby and we played with these two whales for almost an hour and a half. They never left us. We were out further away from all other boats with these two very social whales. The baby was one that was very curious about people and the mother wanted our attention as well. We were all in heaven, whales and humans. I had brought a scrub brush out that I tested on the whales and they seemed to love it, especially the baby. Mom helped the baby up to the human hands to be touched and loved. She then did something the guides are not used to seeing or don’t see much. She flipped upside down exposing her belly and female parts and floated lifelessly for several minutes perpendicular to our panga. We asked our guides how to approach her, but they didn’t seem to have a definite answer. They said stay away from the flukes and her private area for sure. I really think she wanted to be touched but we were all a bit hesitant as we didn’t want to touch her where we might make her mad. We were always instructed to be whale wise and everyone respected the rules. The way she was floating next to the boat was intimating. Her rostrum and head were closest to the panga. The rest of her body was stretched out perpendicular to the panga. Her body was floating at the surface, so her size was easy to see, and it was big and maybe that is what she wanted to show us. The length of her seemed to go on forever. One sweet young man filmed some of the encounters and I am so grateful for the video today. I was so in the moment I didn’t even think to video or take pictures, I just wanted to soak up every minute with this mama and baby gray. But I find it very interesting that the mama gray whale showed up with her baby right after my friend put her mother’s ashes in the ocean. Coincidence or not, not sure, but since I have been traveling and spending more time with the whales there seems to be a lot of things that happen, I can’t understand or explain.