Whale Watching Success

Lee and I have been fortunate to meet a few Canadians who now live and work down here in Cabo San Lucas, and it's making us both ponder the possibilities. Today we took a whale watching tour with Whale Watch Cabo and our guide, a lovely young marine biologist, is from Canada. She told us how Cabo is her base but because tours like this one are seasonal, she needs to take on projects elsewhere in Mexico or the Caribbean. She is also a dive instructor/master and supplements her merger income with odd diving jobs.

While she doesn't make a lot of money, Lee and I both agreed the sacrifice to live in this climate would be worth it. And because I'm so easily bored and like work projects that have a fairly defined end date, the lifestyle she has seems ideal for me. I would also enjoy taking small groups out for tours where I can help them understand, respect, and appreciate nature more. This makes me wonder if an ecotourism program might be up my alley.

What also made me curious today was what the locals thought about Whale Watch Cabo as a company. Here they are, number 1 on Trip Advisor, employing foreign guides with degrees. Do other less sophisticated tour operations feel jobs are being taken away from locals? Whale Watch does not need to aggressively solicit clientele on the beach the way the others seem to, and they appear to have safer equipment and follow nautical laws. To us, this simply made them the right choice for our tour. The marine biologist on board on added to the quality of the day.

I think it's best not to enable the irritating, poorly designed operations and seek out those tour companies that really try to give their customers a great experience. This is one of my missions for the bed and breakfast/beach club I one day hope to open. Quality matters to me.

Whale watching was a success. We saw three different points of activity, one with a single whale and two others with two whales. The first, single whale was playing, apparently, and he did a full breach right in front of us. The playfulness amounted to a bunch of half-breaches in a row with that one highlight in the middle. Another set were not quite jumping out of the water but skimming the surface. Our guide thought they were performing a mating ritual. The third pair were just having fun again, swimming quickly through the water. One of them gave us another showing of a full breach, too!! From what I've read, it can be rare to see a full blown breach so we were very lucky today!
I've noticed a few places that stand out to me with ideas for our beach house/club. Tomorrow before we head out I hope to get a few pictures so I can show Bryan and start enticing him to look for a warmer place to live! Maybe we'll need an on-site nurse....





Full Breach!




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