Todos Santos & Guerrero Negro

Ready to hit the road in Mexico, I headed to the Pueblo Magico of Todos Santos. Mexico has over 150 Pueblos Magicos, or magic towns that have kept much of their original culture, architecture and history intact. Todos Santos is a sleepy town, much quieter than Los Cabos and tends to attract hippies, artists, surfers, and van life types. It was nice to explore the galleries and street art in the town, and of course to have more excellent tacos and margaritas, the coconut prawn tacos were particularly good!

The town is about a 30 minute hike from the beach, which when I got there I was amazed to see it almost deserted. Although to be fair, the tide was so strong you'd have to be pretty brave to swim in the water! I was hoping to see some whales from the shore and was thrilled to see a mother and baby humpback just beyond the shore line, they couldn't have been more than 30 meters away from me! I just sat and watched them for ages as they bobbed up and down for air just beyond the surf.

I thought this was going to be my last chance to see whales in Mexico, my original plan was to head to the mainland within a couple of days. But I got chatting to some people in my hostel and learnt about the grey whales in the Ojo de Liebre Lagoon. This is a place where you don't go and see the whales, the whales will come and see you! The whales come up to the boats and enjoy getting some attention from people so you get to see them really close up. It was about a 14 hour bus ride out of my way to Guerrero Negro, but I had to go there! Thank god the busses in Mexico are decent. Guerrero Negro is a pretty unremarkable town, it mostly houses the workers for the nearby saltworks, which is the biggest commercial saltworks in the world. But it is right next to the UNESCO Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve which includes the Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, where grey whales spent the winter to reproduce in the relative safety of the sheltered lagoon.

So I went out on a little boat to see the whales and it was as amazing as I hoped it would be. After about 10 minutes of heading into the lagoon we stopped the engines and just waited... Within a few minutes you can see huge shapes moving below you, and eventually they come closer to the surface until they're poking their heads up to take a look at you. Some of them will come close enough to be touched. Some rubbed their heads and backs on the boats, I wondered if they were trying to get some barnacles off! And every time they came up for air we got sprayed, which was quite frequent! There were often around 5-10 whales around the boat, just checking us out. It was such a surreal moment, I couldn't get enough of it. So, as I had come all of this way by bus just for the whales, I had to go out again the next day! If possible the next day was even better, there seemed to be even more whales around us and they were even more curious about the boat and its passengers. The captain that day had put on some music because apparently it draws the whales to the boat, so I'm not sure if that was working or if it was the calmer weather. As we were heading back to the dock at the end of the trip, one whale was swimming alongside us keeping up for a while. Then it went ahead and cut across our path to stop the boat, came around to the sides to get some attention from the passengers, and then headed off after a few minutes. It was the most unbelievable experience, I can't explain the feeling of making eye contact with a whale as it looks up at you, it's humbling!Leer más