Our whale trip in Baja, Mexico, extending from the end of March through early April, included the last days before the female whales and their fast-growing babies will head north to join the male whales on their way to the Arctic feeding grounds.

Our adventure began in the charming little town of Loreto, located on the eastern side of the Baja peninsula, next to the Sea of Cortez.

Meet the cast of characters:

Here we are, the nine adventure goddesses. There are two women I haven’t introduced to you yet.

The woman on the right is Diana Ferrell, a most delightful and endlessly interesting person. Her mother is Navajo and grew up as a child in Canyon de Chelly (same place where I taught school). She and her siblings were taken from their homes by missionaries in the 1950s and placed in Christian schools and raised by foster parents. What happened next is too gut-wrenching to write about here. The story has a good ending, as evidenced by Diana who kept us spell-bound by her stories and in awe with what she has done with her life. She used some of her skills on the trip to help heal those of us with aches and pains in our bodies.

The woman in front with her hand under her chin is Tricia McConville from Chicago, another remarkable woman who is following her dreams. She created her own travel company and takes people to faraway exotic places. Her good sense of humor was an asset to the trip.

Time to meet the whales:

Now comes the sad part:

Scientist believe that the starvation is due to climate change which affects the food that the grey whales feed on in the Arctic. I suspect that a big part of the problem is the plastic inadvertently ingested by the whales. The anormound amount of plastic gets impacted in the whale’s stomach and then blocks transit of the food to the intestines, causing the whale to die of starvation. The NYTimes wrote an article about this growing disaster: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/asia/whale-plastics-philippines.html

I’m totally mesmerized by the whales, as though they are kindred spirits. I had the same feeling when I was with the elephants in Thailand. I have a sense that they are trying to communicate something very important to us. If we were indigenous people, we might speak their language and know what the message was.

I dreamed that the whales are offering us their forgiveness for slaughtering them into near extinction. In my dreams they are coming to us as friends, asking us to help them survive and help protect the oceans where they live. I usually wake up from these dreams choked with grief.

My friend, Sally Abbott, talked a lot about the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which she loved. One of the main characters in the book is a whale. Sally felt inspired to write a poem about the whales which she read to us:

The Record Keeper

By Sally Mansfield Abbott

Your girth, your breadth,

Your vast size testify

To knowledge, greatness,

Stores of benevolence

Holder of history

Keeper of the ship’s log

In this gentle bay

You have come

To set the record straight.

It was not you but we

Who were nature’s predators.

Our greedy dependence on oil

Led us to see you as

A malevolent creature

Leviathan, behemoth

Justification for predation.

Your oil lit our lamps

And fueled European and American industry.

Your annual migration from

North to South

From cold to hot.

You figure prominently in our

Soul’s great migration as well.

Pinocchio didn’t become a real boy

Until his sojourn in your belly.

Nor Jonah, a prophet of the Lord,

Until swallowed up and released.

Ahab wrestled good for evil

Before he was finally impaled

On his own harpoon

The might of the Beluga

Was more pacific

And ultimately victorious.

Grey whale, you came to

Pacheco Mayoral in San Ignacio Bay

To teach the good news

Of forgiveness and starting again

With your healing touch.

My very first close encounter with a whale occurred in 1996 in Glacier Bay, Alaska. I was in a two-person kayak. My seven-year-old son, Barrett, sat in the front and I sat in the back. We watched in awe as the magnificent humpback whales breached high into the air not very far from where we were paddling. We had been assured by a fisherman that the whales would not tip our kayak over and that they were very aware of our presence.

As I paddled, I had a strong feeling that something big was about to happen, but I didn’t know what it was. The feeling got stronger and stronger until the hair stood straight up on my forearms and my heart began to beat faster. Then the water on the right side of the kayak next to me became unnaturally still like opaque glass. About 18 inches from where I sat, a greyish-brown mound rose through the surface as water poured off its steep sides. The mound got bigger and bigger until I realized it was the head of a humpback whale. The head kept rising until the whale looked me straight in the eye with his one eye on the side of his head.

Time stood still as we looked at each other. I could feel my eyes fill with tears. I cannot tell you how long we looked at each other. It was probably only a few seconds but it felt like an eternity.The next thing I knew, the head sunk down into the water as slowly as it has risen up.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.” Barrett turned around in his seat up front and asked me why I was saying Oh my God so many times. I said, “Barrett, I just looked into the eye of God. I looked right into a whale’s eye. We looked at each other up close.” He gave a predictable response, “Mom, why do you think that’s God you looked at? If that’s God, then why isn’t everything you look at God?” He made a good point.

Lynne Cox is a famous world class swimmer. When she was 17, she trained off the shore of southern California at night, swimming mile after mile in training. On one of her swims she was joined by a baby grey whale who had gotten separated from its mother. Here is a link to the 23 minute podcast about the bond that developed between the two of them. It is so poignant, you will surely be in suspense right from the first sentence through the whole 23 minutes. https://player.fm/series/this-is-love/episode-2-something-large-and-wild   

We reluctantly left Campo Cortez on the Pacific Coast in the San Ignacio Lagoon and headed back across the Baja wilderness, a five-hour drive back to Loreto. There we spent two days soaking up every moment of paradise before we headed back to our lives in the States…and Deborah headed back to her life in La Paz.

Addendum: The photos were a joint effort. I can no longer identify who took which photo in order to give them credit. To create a manageable blog, I had to sort through nearly 400 photos and part with 350 of them—no easy task when everywhere I looked were scenes worthy of preservation.

If you would like to learn more about the enchanting and unforgettable trips that Deborah Stephens arranges, you could visit her website at  www.timelessjourneys.net

I hope you enjoyed your virtual travels with me.