Whale watching!

When we went and saw the whales last weekend, we did other things as well, like take a walk through the town. From far away at night, it seemed like a gigantic place!! But turns out, it’s one long strip, with street, and ONE row of houses/ businesses on the south side with literally NOTHING behind them. Flatness for miles. Apparently Guerrero Negro has the same amount of land dedicated to salt production as the amount of land in Mexico City. GN produces 5% of the world’s sea salt. The thing that most impressed me about GN was their handicap friendly sidewalks. They had ramps that went down to street level at intersections, instead of curbs! Granted, we should have just been impressed that they had sidewalks, b/c we don’t have them really in our town. Occasionally you’ll see them by a school, or a group of businesses, but they are often cut off by dirt on either side of their pitiful existence.

Before we went down to GN, I researched places we could stay. As I read some online reviews of the hotels, one of them said “if this establishment is going to operate in the winter, Dec-Mar, which is main tourist season, then they should have heated rooms.” I laughed, thinking, I LIVE 7 hours north of GN and I don’t have a heated house, nobody does.

Our motel was clean and comfortable. There was no Gideon's Bible, no telephone, no shampoo, no coffee maker, no alarm clock, no fire escape plan, no iron, no microwave, no city guides, no tv guides. There was wireless though! But we didn't use it. They chose toilet bowl fresheners as room air fresheners, attaching them under the sink and on the towel rack. It was funny being in a room that smelled pungently like fresh toilet. Maybe that's how live fish feel when we flush them down. We asked to pay both nights when we first arrived, but the guy said, at noon tomorrow, if you want to stay another day, pay then. We thought, "that's ominous." We were warm enough, just like I thought we'd be!

Our whale watching tour was at 8am, and we had to sign in at 7:30, so there was no sleeping in on my bday. (sadness)
We showed up in sandals, with several layers on top b/c it was supposed to be 80 degrees. With one look the employee said, “don’t you have warmer clothes to wear? Well, maybe I’ll ask the captain if you could borrow windbreakers while you’re out there.” That was before he saw we were wearing sandals, the “they aren’t prepared disdain” ever growing in his head. It was a half hour drive out to the dock, most of it past nothing, flat nothingness, on a light to medium bumpy road. One of the American ladies rightly commented, “this must be the nice road they save for the tourists.” Once we got on the 23 foot fishing type motor boats, we zoomed out to the middle of the lagoon. That part was windy and cold! Once we stopped though, we had to cut motor within certain feet of the whales, it was warm and sunny and beautiful, and the captain had either forgotten to give us the windbreakers or decided we didn’t need them. The water even seemed warm enough to swim in (we didn’t.) We saw tons of whales, the beginning of the trip being much more exciting than the end, b/c you saw them far away and thought “wow, we are sooo close!” and then they APPROACHED our boat, and used it to scratch their backs, and swam around us and around us, and we TOUCHED THEM. They feel squishy. Joanne even almost poked ones eye out, because her hand was in the water and then it jumped out at us! Unfortunately, that didn’t last forever, and during the last bit of the tour the whales were farther away, but jumping out of the water and doing funny things with their spouts and back tails. NO matter how many whales we could see at once (6? 8?) nor how many cute things they were doing could be as spectacular as being 1 foot away from them. The whales we saw were Grey Whales, and about double the size of our boat. I asked the tour guide if the boat would tip over and he said it wouldn’t. When they asked everyone in the boat where they were from, there were 8 of us, all of them Mexican except for my friend and I, I said, “San Quintin” and they were all like, “OH! San Quintin, California.” I corrected them “No, San Quintin, BAJA California, two hours south of Ensenada, five hours south of Tijuana.” And there was a collective groan that in MY culture means, we understand now.

On this trip I learned that salt is used for much more things than just the table. Some food comes already seasoned, it’s used to make chlorine bleach, plastics, chemicals, and who knows what else.

We went to a restaurant to have my birthday dinner, and they put pomegranate seeds in my steamed rice to decorate it. Very classy.

On the way home, when we had almost approached our city, the non-working bus driver (they have 2 that take turns) walked a few rows back to where we were sitting to tell us, “This is where you get off.” I don’t think he saw us readying our things, or knew we lived there and were very familiar with our town. We were so eager to get off that bus and be home!

Today, one of my daughters turns 16, and another child in our org turns 14! Yay for birthdays!

(I read The Mysterious Benedict Society, on that trip.)