Mexico!

I just got done with a 10 day trip in Baja California, with the Safari Voyager.  It was a whirlwind trip, and it started out with a blue whale!

After the whale, we found these little alcids, they are Craveri's Murrelets

Here's one taking off

So I was part of the crew, of course.  Here's a shot of Walter, one of the guides.

On Isla Carmen, I found a dead tarantula, but it looks alive...

And a fig, which I love the colors of...

And a Bighorn Sheep horn.  It was big!

I don't know this flower, but I like it.

An American Oystercatcher.

And a Brown Pelican

And Brown Boobies.  The Male is on the left and the female is on the right.

Here's a Ruddy Turnstone

And an Osprey

These Cormorants are starting to turn to breeding plumage

A Snowy Egret

Another Osprey, but this one has a fish!

And a turtle.  This was from Bahia San Francisquito, which is further north than I had been before.  

A Perigrine Falcon with a bird in its talons.

The Pelican's outer coat of feathers are very loose, and I think they are used to cover the flying feathers to protect them from the sun, or to help thermoregulate.  

This gull was quite inquisitive

The sunrises are beautiful.  We made it to Puerto Refugio, and that was the furthest north we went

At Puerto Refugio we found some sea lions, but also an elephant seal, in the upper left.  The Big one.

A california sea lion with a drool problem

Another sea lion looking cool

and in classic pose

Two Blue footed Boobies looking like friends.

Here's the elephant seal closer up

We had a beach party that night and it was nice to have a fire on the beach

The next day we went to a tiny island in the middle of the sea, called San Pedro del Martyr.  it is covered in birds and sea lions, and the volcanic tuff is very cool looking, and erodes beautifully.

A curious sea lion

Then we went back to Isla Carmen, to the west side, and I found a cardinal

and a dead bighorn sheep

Then we went to isla san francisco, and there were little pipers on the beach.  I think this one is a dunlin

There was a skeleton of a needlefish on the beach, and someone found a little plastic figure of Olaf from "Frozen" and I posed him in the jaws of the fish.  Those teeth are looking great!

On the last day of the trip we went to Isla Esperitu Santu, and I found a Snowy Plover

And an Antelope Squirrel.  

It was a great trip, and I had never been to a few of the spots before, and so I was really glad to see them and to learn more about it.  We didn't see many whales, and most of them were in the southern part, so I am also glad to do the 7 day trips coming up in February and March, and cover those spots again.  

Tomorrow I go back to the USA for christmas and then I go back to my Aquila in a little while to sail around for a month before going back to work.  Lots of work this winter.
 

I'm in Hawaii now

Ok, Its been a little while, but once I was done with the summer season in Alaska, I went back to Bellingham for a few weeks.  During that time, there were some Northern Lights.  My mother and I went down to the lake to look out over a place with less lights, and we saw these sights:

And a bit more streaks to the east...

A few days later I went down to Mexico to get on my sailboat, and spent three weeks working on getting my boat up and running, and doing some surfing and sailing.  But then I flew to Hawaii to work on the Safari Explorer for a few weeks.  I'm there (here?) now.  On my way in, I took a little short hopper plane (a Cessna Caravan) over to Molokai, and here's a picture of Diamond Head.

Its kinda neat its a crater.  with a playfield in the center.  

Then the flight went over to Molokai, and this was the west side.

And the southwest side.  I stopped at this harbor when I was sailing around in 2012.  It had a bunch of Bees in it.

At Molokai the sunrise was great, with a palm tree.

We got the ship ready for a few days, and then we got guests, which we took to the Halawa valley.  I had sailed past this valley in 2012, and saw a big shark nearby.  Abe will remember this.

In the valley there was great rainbows all over.

And the Taro plants, which they make food out of.  

Here's another look at the taro fields, like a rice paddy.

The big trees have domains of greenery and they don't quite overlap, so its like a geologic map

There are these Elephant ear plants, which are giant.

Here's a better look at the leaf domains...

I found a surprising amount of fungus.  

We walked to a waterfall, but it was pretty good river flow, so we had to be careful to get across the rivers.

Of course the flowers here are beautiful!

We headed from Molokai to Maui, and found some whales...

And we had a great dolphin playing in the bow wake.  

We are now on Lanai, and then tomorrow we'll go to the big island, then play there for a few days until we get new guests on Sunday.