Loreto is probably a quarter of the way up the peninsula on the Sea of Cortez and normally is a pretty touristy location with beautiful sea views and like many other towns in Baja had it’s origin as a mission town. It also has a marine park off it’s shores consisting of 4 islands. We were lucky enough to take a boat ride around one of them, Isle de Coronado, it was one of the most amazing marine boat tours we have ever taken. The boat was easy to procure just walking down to the harbor we had boat captains offering rides. We started at 10am not expecting too much, after a 40 minute boat ride we approached Coronado and saw a turtle then another then some stingrays and then more sting rays. The stingrays are known for jumping out of the water in the area but it is the wrong time of year for this behavior. They seemed to be all over the place in the azure blue shallows. We spied some dolphins off in the distance and headed that direction and all of a sudden they were all over the place hundreds of dolphins jumping out of the water and playing in the wake of the boat. The kids were screaming with joy and just couldn’t believe it. After a half an hour playing with the dolphins we headed around the island and observed some sea lions.
We were flabbergasted with the abundance with the marine life and then our boat driver turned to us and said do you want to go see a blue whale?? We were like sure, but I thought to myself something got lost in translation, maybe a gray whale. We headed out to see where another boat was sitting idle and waited for the whale… All of a sudden there is this huge loud whooooshhh of air and we see this massive whale surface, it was enormous! We puttered the boat over and stayed about 1000 feet away and watched the whale surface and breath 8-9 times and then dove, showing it’s tale. We sat in rapt attention for probably 40 minutes as the creature dove and surfaced several times, likely feeding on krill. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen on the ocean, we were in the presence of the largest species to ever exist on the earth! After our encounter we saw a blue footed boobie and hung out on a small beach for an hour or so before heading back to Loreto. We had more ceviche strolled along the malecon and walked to the mission but basically couldn’t stop talking about the blue whale.
Travel-Trotter 