A Charter trip in the sea of Cortez

I just finished a cool trip up around the islands of the sea of cortez.  It was 10 days long charter with one guest, Natalie.  She wanted to see some whales, and explore the islands around here, so off we went.  We found some Humpbacks for starters...

And then went to Esperitu Santo island and found a cool hike up a hill to look down on the boat from.  This is a tree along the way.

That night the stars (and planets) were out nicely, so we looked, and found the moon, and a planet, and the moons of that planet!  Its Jupiter.  These are the Galilean moons.  Galileo looked with a 6x telescope and found these circling the big dot in the sky and thought that the earth might not be the center of the universe.  

Also in the sky was the Moon.  Wow.

Then we went to Isla San Francisco, and did the ridge hike.

A view of Aquila from the shore.    

Then we went and did a morning skiff tour at this mangrove spot and then sailed up to Punta Salinas, and did a nice arroyo hike.

The sunsets from here are amazing.  You can see the Uncruise boat in this photo, they were there too.  So I got to say hi to some friends over there.  I'll join the ship in a week.

Then we went to a new cool spot and hiked up this valley up to where it becomes a slot canyon.  There were great birds along the way, including some Cardinals.

And some nice butterflies

At the slot there was some water blocking us, so we didn't go any further.

And we found a vulture skeleton, that hadn't been picked over too much, so the bones were in great shape.  Look at the eye socket bones!

The next day it was supposed to be calm, so we set off for whales.  We found a sperm whale!  We spent a lot of time with it, and then Natalie went for a swim with it, and saw it under water.  It was an amazing moment.

I really like how bumpy they are.

And the blow is diagonal.  We also saw it sitting in the water vertically and the nose was a round bump sticking out.

Then we had some dolphins and Natalie got a great view from the bow.

And just before sunset we found a blue whale.  

We managed to get really close to it in the skiff.

Then the sun set.

And the blue whale blew.

The next morning we set off again, and it was calm again.  I brought Natalie up the mast for a view.

And we found the blue whale again!

This time when we got close, Natalie went swimming with it, and got two good looks as it swam by her.

We then went to Agua Verde and had a great sunrise

And did a cool hike along the shoreline through some caves

We found a pretty tame pelican and got some nice views.

Then we went to Los Gatos and did the hike up the red rocks

Its sandstone and wonderful

And we were heading south at dawn.

This day we had some wind, and did some nice fast sailing.

Natalie did some swinging from the halyards

And we ended up at the sea lion colony and got some looks at baby sea lions

The last day was at Esperitu Santo again, in beautiful weather.

We hiked a new spot and got up pretty high.

Here's a shot of the boat going along with the kite camera.