We are still on our first walk of the day – there was just so much to see!
After leaving the sea lions on the beach, we continued our walk and ended up at a fantastic nesting area for Blue Footed Boobies and the endemic Waved Albatross. We were very lucky to see several of the Waved Albatrosses!
As a matter of fact, we got to see a pair of them greet each other by clacking their bills. Totally cool that we got video of that! The female then wandered off and came walking towards us. They look pretty funny when walking – like the old “weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down” toys. Ha! Giving away our age with that! 😉
They were so Happy Together...
We saw five albatrosses here – four adults and one chick. There are actually 12,000 pairs that nest in the bushes in this area. How did we only see 5 with that many birds during nesting season?!? 😮
This shows the happy couple from the above video, along with another one.
Here is our wandering female. She just checked us out and then wandered off again.
Eventually, she waddled over to the “runway” where they take off over the small cliff. Here she is flying off to the ocean. This is also a good view of the area. The trail stopped here, so we didn’t walk any further. In the distance (and all around us), there are Blue Footed Booby nests. The albatrosses were to our left, not in this photo.
Amazingly, we saw a Waved Albatross chick! It was far away, so this is a zoomed photo of the large baby. They are supposed to hatch sometime early September. This is October, so this chick is maybe 4-6 weeks old. A big ball of fluff!
Immediately to the right (not in the above video), there was a large colony of Blue Footed Booby nests. This pair had the most beautiful nesting spot!
Right there on the side of our trail was this pair’s nest. The mom was just trading off egg-sitting duty with dad.
Dad was fastidious and had to rearrange the nest (such as it is!) before settling down on the egg… (there is music with the video).
Along the water, we saw a beautiful Lava Heron…
We finished our morning land adventure and went back to the boat. Captain Jorge moved our boat around the west to the north side of the island to anchor in Gardner Bay. First up, we did a snorkel outing in the bay.
I’m sure you want to see more of me in my wetsuit – haha! Here I am about to slip into the water.
The highlight of this snorkel was swimming with the very playful sea lions. There were a few of them swimming around everyone, trying to get us to play. This one was trying hard to get Cornelia (one of our guides) to play with her. They blow bubbles as part of the fun. There were a number of times during our trip we had sea lions swim right up to our mask and blow bubbles – really awesome!!
She was really trying hard to engage Cornelia, even biting at her fins several times. I got this one photo that really shows it.
After that, this sea lion swam directly to me and chomped my elbow!! Luckily, with the wetsuit layers, I didn’t have any problems from the teeth. 😮
After that, she swam down and found a small piece of kelp to play with. She swam up and down, tossing the kelp and catching it. Here, she was just catching it again…
She even tried to get her buddy to play with her and the kelp…
This was an amazing experience! We had really hoped to be able to swim with the sea lions on this trip – and wow, over the two weeks, we sure did! 😀
Of course, there were also fish in the water. We got a great photo of this King Angel Fish. Wow, their colors are stunning! Later, you’ll see pictures we took of small schools of these fish.
Unfortunately, I got too cold in the 68(F) degree water, so I hopped out into the dinghy to warm up. Jeff is lucky that he was always able to stay the full time in the water, which was typically about 45-60 minutes. In the 68-69(F) water, I could only stay in 20-30 minutes. Brrrr! The last few snorkels of our trip I used one of the boat’s full wetsuits and layered it over mine, along with everything else. That made me much warmer, so I could stay in the full time.
The water here was an amazing turquoise color. I didn’t saturate this photo when editing – it really was that pretty. This is my view from the dinghy, while the remaining folks were still in the water.
All this, and we haven’t even had lunch yet!
Back on the boat, they served us another great meal. We did remember to take a picture of the starter and vegetable dish, but forgot the main dishes and dessert. Oh well!
We started with this delicious soup. An interesting thing is that they like to add crunchy things to their soup. So they also set out a bowl of popcorn, baked plantains (similar to bananas) and their crunchy/hard corn. You are supposed to sprinkle these on your soup. The plantains were yummy, I just ate them as my snack. 😉
For lunch and dinner, they always put out bowls of a salad or vegetable for sharing at the table. This meal, it was a corn, pea and tofu mix.
After lunch, we had a siesta break, then a short visit to the beach of Gardner Bay, followed by a break before dinner.
BUT…..
We were in our cabin and there was a big announcement over the speakers that whales had been sighted in the distance. They were putting out the two pangas for anyone who wanted to try locating them. Wow! Of course, we ran out to jump on the dinghy. Luckily, Jeff had his phone (camera) with him, I was in such a rush I didn’t grab mine. That’s ok – it was an amazing experience!
Jeff got a lot of pictures and video, and we also got some photos and videos from fellow passenger, Mark. Mark was a riot – standing on our boat with a GoPro in one hand and iphone camera in the other. The boat was not stable – it was moving at a good speed, and the water was choppy – it’s amazing he didn’t fall out! 😜
Here is a view of the other dinghy as we got close to where they were spotted. We then scanned the horizon, looking for the telltale signs. We did see spouts, but the other pictures are so much better, I didn’t include the spouts and other farther away photos.
The insane thing about getting a picture/video is that you do NOT know where the whale is under the water. When you figure it out, you need to whip your camera to the spot and hope you can get it in time. 😮 There were a lot of photos that are just empty water due to missing. LOL! 🤣
But then… we got to them! There was a mom and her baby calf! The calf was having a great time breaching over and over and over. He/she just kept jumping! It was amazing! And, we got VERY close to these two whales.
Here is his face peeking …
And here he is breaching…
Initially, we weren’t sure if the whale breaching was mom or baby. Ha! When we finally saw mom breach after the calf – she was HUGE! You will see that amazing pair of breaches in the video below.
In the meantime, here are a couple more photos. I believe this one is mom. It’s further away from our boat at this point. The baby had an all white chest/abdomen, while mom had a gap in the white, as you see on this picture.
And this is definitely the mom! It was an amazing breach!
Now, what you have been waiting for! The video with these amazing whales!
Thanks again to Mark for sharing his photos and videos with us. I combined them with Jeff’s video for this compilation. Enjoy!
After this fantastic experience, we had to motor back a loooonnng way to return to the boat. We had followed the whales out quite a long distance. We were all amped from such an exciting and once-in-a-lifetime experience! After a bit of chatter in the bar/lounge, we had another wonderful dinner.
Surprise! Tomorrow brings another great once-a-lifetime experience!