Our weeks 3 and 4 guests hailed from New Mexico, New Jersey, Oregon, Massachusetts and New York.
Week 3 brought us a few blue whales for the first time this season, and also a great grey whale day as well as some wonderful encounters with dolphins. In fact we saw one day a pod 1500-2000 common dolphins! This impressive pod was stretched out in a shape like a wing for about a kilometre, and was by far the largest dolphin pod we have seen this year. The winds were fairly fierce during parts of week 3 and while we got out a few times, we did not have the freedom to go where we wanted to, only where the winds allowed us to go. The biggest news of the week at sea was that our blue whale count finally began to grow.
Then the winds calmed down and more and more whales came in during week 4. We had a fairly big blue whale day right at weeks beginning, with 5-6 blues. We also had multiple fin and humpback whales that same day. We continued to see blue whales each day, and the odd fin or humpback whale, and also had a fun sea lion encounter at Galleras. As the winds stayed mostly calm we made the trek way north to Isla San Il Defense on Saturday. We had an amazing time seeing the nesting pelican and frigate birds on this remarkable island. Then as if by magic we had a humpback whale enter a tiny bay, and work the edges of the cliffs and feed against the wall of the bay. We put the drone up and Delphi got some fabulous footage of this whale feeding in the most surprising of manners. The whale passed under our stopped boat on numerous occasions and fed on top of fairly shallow, reefs offering grand backdrops of color to the drone footage. The encounter ended with the whale leaving the bay with us following and about 15 forceful tail lobs and tail slaps very close to our boat. Thenwe went to visit the spectacular house at San Basilio, built over 20 years ago by a Spanish Marquesa, and now being offered for our use next season. The home, the views, the food they served us, were all quite stunning. The opportunity is tempting and I will be meeting with the owner later this week to discuss our options. We came home and ended the week to a rather marvellous sunset with everyone feeling rather joyous.
Will more blue whales keep arriving. Will the krill patches we saw up north lead to more whales up that way. The mystery of this season, which has been great but admittedly has us seeing a lower than normal amount of total whales will continue into week 5. Please stay tuned for next weeks blog report.
