ODO: 311,085
Whales, day 2! On the way out, all of us were feeling like maybe two days in a row was too much, or might be boring or something, but we were SO wrong! Day two was a whole different experience. We spent the morning being mobbed by whales. There were two to four juvenile whales around and under us at all times, even though the water was shallow enough for a whale to just fit under the boat. It took them a while to let us pet them, but after the first whale broke the ice, everyone wanted to be pet. They couldn’t get enough. We eventually had to just leave because our time was up even though the whales wanted more.
After we finished our second day of whale magic, we headed off to find a beach rumoured to have fossils and shark teeth. We searched the shore for a couple of hours and came up empty handed. Luckily, we finished our hunt before the rain started, rain which left us a pretty solid double rainbow. Since the fossil beach was a bust, we headed off to try our hand at fishing a stretch of coastline none of us had explored before.
South of Gurrero Negro, we followed a wash out to the Pacific. The shape of Baja in this area forms a bit of a hook that reaches out and scoops everything out of the ocean, EVERYTHING. The end of the wash we drove down was packed with trash, as was the next wash we came to.
Totally random, but when we pulled up on this garbage beach, we saw a humpback whale slapping the surface with its tail! According to the internet they do this for several reasons, including scaring off predators or other dude whales. Excuse the video quality, they were far away and we did the best we could
The fish camp we stopped to check for beach access was also clogged with trash. And no beach access, so we continued down the road to try our final option for a campsite. Success! Sort of…We found a nice wide spot just above the beach (again, filled with trash along the high tide line), with several paths down to the beach. This beach turned out to be full of treasures mixed into the trash. We found several whale ribs, several whale vertebras, dolphin skulls and spines, and a sea lion jaw. We spent two nights here combing up and down the beach. The fishing was a bust, but the geology of the beach was interesting enough to keep us occupied and tire us out with all our exploring.
We continued on our tour of this stretch of the Pacific coast, and found even more dolphin and whale bones as we drove. A surprising amount were up on the dunes, far from the ocean. Our guess was that they were dragged there by one of the many, many coyotes we kept seeing. After a little more exploring, we found a solid beach spot for the night. It was still very windy, but we built a big fire that kept us warm.
The next morning we headed over to Bahia de Tortugas and to the most westerly point on the peninsula. There were many whales spouting, and a giant kelp bed floating off shore. We explored a couple of the bays near by before settling into the middle of one while the weather was lovely. Turns out that didn’t last and the wind picked up a lot. We had a pretty blustery fire that night.
Now it was time for us to part ways with our Metal Wizard, we were going south and he needed to go back north. We made it down to our favorite campground in San Ignacio. Warm and clean showers, laundry service, and easy walking distance to town make this place very convenient. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get laundry done, but we did install our final storage solution: a ROAM expedition case organizer along our driver side camper window. We don’t know what’s going in it yet, but more storage is never a bad thing, right? After our project, we walked into town for dinner with the local cats.
In the morning we had a much overdue shower, then packed up to head over to San Juanico for some surfing. Unfortunately, this was where all the wind was. We arrived to 17mph sustained wind that was blowing all the sand around. Truly miserable. After checking the weather, we decided to head out of town to see if we could tuck in along the hills to hide for the night. We managed to find a spot between a large and small hill, which thankfully cut enough wind for a decent night’s sleep.
