Baja Day 4: Travel Day.
This is the events of our third full day of the expedition. All photos from this day can be found here. The daily expedition report is also available.
At the beginning of Day 4, we went whale watching. We ended up following several whales that were mid-courtship. It seems that gray whale males don’t fight for the affection of a female. Instead, two males will go after a single female where one male actually helps the other during the mating process.
Like the day before, whale watching was divided into two groups; odd cabins go second, even cabins go first. When not whale watching, William — one of the crew of biologists / naturalists on board — gave an amusing lecture of the history of Tequila. As it turns out, Louise — the ship’s “hotel manager” — is a big fan of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant and we had a long chat about the finer points of Tequila, including sampling one that I have never encountered before. Given that we are in an odd cabin, it was an excellent way to warm up before whale watching.
The rest of the day has been spent on the move. We traversed south through the “un-navigable waters”, past San Carlos, and onwards into the open Pacific waters south to Cabo San Lucas. There were whales spouting all around us, lots of random birds and the occasional dolphin and/or seal bouncing through the surf (quite the argument over which one it was ensued).
To our east is the shore of one of the numerous islands along Baja. Beautiful towering cliffs and hills with the sun setting against them and clouds gathering around their peaks. One particular mountain caught my eye in that it looked like a regular hill that had simply been sliced in half with the raw face of the cut facing into the pacific. Unfortunately, the light wasn’t very good when I took the photo.
All of this with a slight bit of sea swell to the point where the expedition leader warned everyone to make sure everything in our cabins was either at its lowest gravity or otherwise would not fall off whatever it happens to be on. Oddly, they recommended that we place our cameras in the sink. Why the sink and not, say, the floor height drawer or on the floor under our bed nestled in our luggage is beyond me.
Frankly, I would expect them to recommend keeping the sink accessible given the potentially explosive results some might experience from being in a rolling sea. This boat only draws about 8.5 feet and, as such, it certainly does roll.
Now, this raises an interesting point. Many years ago, I went deep sea fishing and spent most of the 8 hour trip lying on my back in the cabin trying desperately not to launch the contents of my stomach and a good part of my digestive system overboard.
The crew of the Sea Bird is prepared for this. The ship’s doctor made available some random anti-seasickness medicine (starts with an ‘M’) and answered any questions one might have.
I’m not much for taking random medicines of that nature. Instead, I asked the kitchen for a hunk of ginger root (they gave me a whole one) and have been gnawing on said root all day long. No signs of motion sickness whatsoever. I have no idea if it is because of the root or not and, frankly, I couldn’t care less. It worked. I’m happy.
Why ginger root? Apparently, Australian sea goers swear by ginger root. I had no idea about that, but I did catch a recent Mythbusters where they tested various seasickness remedies. Ginger root and some random commercial drug were the only two universal solutions.
In any case, the seas we ran through were relatively benign in nature. Only a couple of swells have been big enough to knock anything over. Roger did heave-ho at one point, but that may have been because he was twirling while bouncing between walls in the swell. As soon as he heaved, he downed a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich with no ill effects.
If we had opted for the La Paz -> San Carlos trip, we would have traversed this particular bit of Pacific against the current and wind. Now, that would have been unpleasant. And that is exactly the trip that Sea Bird’s sister ship is taking at the same time as us (we will pass in the night, apparently)!