Date: 4/26/2009
Location: La Paz
Weather: Hot, high 80's to low 90's all week
Saturday we went out with a new friend of ours in the marina, Bill Lee on Ocean Quest, to look for Whale Sharks, Rhincodon typus, just outside the bay. Bill has a large fast tender and Linda and I with Bill and his lady friend packed some lunches and headed out the 3-5 miles to look for sharks. Actually the Whale Shark is not a typical shark but is a large, slow moving fish that eats plankton, not people. See this Wikipedia article, Whale Sharks. They are frequently found around La Paz so we went out and watched for any kind of disturbance on the water or birds swarming overhead. After an hour of looking with no luck we went ashore on a sandy beach with sand dunes behind and did some beach combing and had lunch. After lunch we resumed our search but to no avail. The afternoon breeze was starting to kick up bringing with it a chop so we decided to head back before running out of fuel. As luck would have it we ran into a pod of dolphins and had a great time playing with them as we motored along. They would come right next to the dinghy, just our of arms reach, and jump out of the water and run under the boat. The dinghy sits low in the water with four people in it and more than once we took waves over the side soaking all of us. The air temp was around 90° and the water is 75° so it wasn't cold and we all had a great time chasing and running with the dolphins.
We are running to get ready to leave this week for the islands up North. Why is it if you have 4 weeks in a place and enough time to be as lazy as an old dog on a hot day that you end up with dozens of things to do in the last 2 days? Maybe I just figured it out?
We are healthy and there is no swine flu in southern Baja. There's nothing to be worried about here or in the Sea of Cortez where we're going. If you listen to cable news you would think that armageddon is upon us. It will poison your mind if you watch enough of it, just turn it off.
Later...