Whales, NatGeo, Me

I saw whales last week.  Many, many, many whales.  Grey ones (moms and babies), humpbacks, one gigantic blue whale.  And Orcas. And birds I'd never heard of.  Even the birds I was familiar with seemed more magnificent.  I was in the Sea of Cortez on a National Geographic ship.    This is a nerd cruise, not a Carnival Cruise. (If you ever see me on a Carnival-type cruise, you'll know I am being punished for doing something horrid).

This boat housed 55 passengers, a smallish staff/crew, augmented by PhD types on board to educate and help us.  Biologists, a botanist, a couple professional photographers.  There was a small contingent of Yale alums and they brought along their very own academic; I believe his area is biology of fish evolution. Seriously.  He tried to tell a joke one night about the expression "drink like a fish"; one of those excruciatingly awkward moments where someone realizes that outside his normal circle, he really just is not a funny man.  Interesting, yes. Funny - no.

So no, there were no musical acts made up of near would-be has-been almost stars. Well, one evening a couple local fishermen with guitars came on board and played a bit.  Seriously.  There was no casino and no bingo - instead, we had lectures on wetlands, whale migration, John Steinbeck's book "A Log of Sea of Cortez" (by someone who had actually known Steinbeck).  Like I said - this was nerd heaven.

The area is spectacular; the colors are beautiful, the air is unbroken.  Mountains, sand dunes, water,  cacti - somehow they look like they are created with pastels.  I don't remember ever wishing I could paint, but on the first morning, watching the sun come up, I had that wish.

One day, as it turned towards evening, I stopped in the lounge/bar to grab my afternoon cup of tea before heading to the deck for an hour with the Steve Jobs biography --- and I realized - on a 'normal' cruise, at 6PM, the bar would be full of people heading into, or deep into,  cocktail hour.  Here, on this boat, the lounge had maybe 10 people, all spread out in ones and twos, each reading a book.  Nerd heaven.

I learned that I loved seeing the migration and calving of the greys just as much as I thought I would. I learned I love sleeping on a boat.  Some people got very ill our first two sort-of rough nights, but I loved it.  I love dawn on a boat. I saw my first "green flash".  I snorkeled with sea lions (the adults can be big and scary, the babies are like puppies - bumping your head, your butt, chewing on your fins -- you laugh right through the snorkel).
Mexico is still Mexico.  Navigational markers made out of trash line an important channel.  Wonderful meals of local fish I have never heard of.  And the country is still a poor, dirty mess.

I had never done "group travel" before;  it's for people who like their travel safe and controlled.  There is little risk of things going seriously off the rails.  (Unlike my normal style -  two sisters hanging out at the Moscow train station at midnight to catch the overnight train to St. Petersburg... a little nervewracking, but fun.  We like risk).

Oh, and I love the airport scanners.  We don't have them  yet in little Wilmington, NC, but in LA, I get to breeze right through.  Skippy the implanted defibrillator (ICD) won't go through a metal detector, so most travel still involves the charming TSA pat-down.  But not in big, shiny LAX -  I think we with ICD's may be the only people who relish those scanners, but we do.

I loved the trip.  The next travel will probably be back to some scary sister trip (I'm trying to talk one of them into going to Israel).  But this was wonderful.  A lifelong dream - waking up surrounded by grey whales.  Whale after whale after whale; inches away.

Life is short.