Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Los Islotes seals

After a quiet evening at beautiful Ensenada Grande, we pulled anchor to swim with the seals at nearby Los Islotes which is about 800 m (0.5 mile) off the tip of Partida Island of Mexico.

Sunning seals

Jordan anchored to a mooring ball when we arrived at Los Islotes, and as the rain came down, we got in the water with the seals. They played tug-a-war with us with a dangling cord attached to our dinghy and also a cord attached to our inflatable ball. Such a thrilling experience it was to swim with these playful creatures and to snorkel and take in the hundreds of colourful fish below! We've never seen fish in such abundance during other snorkeling occasions, none of which the seals seemed interested in...

what fish?

It started to rain harder and the water was a bit chilly so we cut our adventure short. (We could only take photos of the seals with a towel protecting the camera from the rain so didn't get very good shots.)

We then anchored in a cove just below the white cross (N24°33.469' W110°23.834') which was beside our previous night's anchorage. The wind changed from north to a westerly that blew straight into the bay giving us a bouncy night.

Today from our boat we saw schools of fish too numerous to mention, a ray, a sea turtle, a dolphin, 2 different pods of whales - some breaching spectacularly, swam with seals nose-to-nose. And explored a blooming meadow with beautiful butterflies, ancient midden, and an old well in a gorge spotted with barrel cactus and many other desert flora.

Bright orange and yellow colours

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