Sleeping with the Whales

Next stop was Guerro Negro to coordinate with son Michael by telephone so Lorne could help him while he installed the new inverter Lorne had ordered. The internet is truly a wonderful thing. He could research it, check out the specs, find out if any of the solar stores in town had one, order it, write out a simplified version for installation and then follow along while Michael was doing the work. There were detailed pictures of the inverter in the specs so he could see what it looked like to further help Michael. Very cool. All is well now. The house is once again up and running. Thank goodness for kids.

Once that the instalation of the inverter was complete we headed out to Laguna Ojo de Liebre (aka Scammon’s Lagoon) had lunch and hired a panga to take us out to view the whales. Very awesome. We had them right beside the boat surfacing and spy hopping! Very large fishies! One mother had a huge chunk taken out of its back, the panga operator said that this was the second year he had seen her there and she seems fine although the wound looks gross. She showed us her baby. If you double click on the pictures you should be able to see a larger image and then if you can zoom in you should be able to see what I mean by the huge chunk out of her back, its like a saddle. The first whale to spy hop was right beside the panga - he was huge! and none of us expected him - he just rose up and peered at us - of course my camera was not ready..... I have some great pictures of where the whales were.... I didn't want to take our new camera as it might/would get wet with all the spray from the whales. The whales are late this year and there are only about 10 in the lagoon and only 2 mothers with their babies. I think we saw them all! It was nothing like our last trip here when there were over 300 whales in the lagoon and we could see them spy hopping and breaching all over the place. We couldn’t hear them at night like we did last time either. I guess its better to go on the way back home?

None the less it has to be one of the very quietest places on earth. That night the sky was clear, the stars were brilliant, not a breath of wind and the water was completely still. It was so quiet it felt like my ears were almost ringing. Perhaps this is what is meant by "the silence was deafening".