Final post: sea life and tour buses in distress

We left La Paz to head down to San Jose del Cabo to end the tour. As we walked out of the Hyatt, I noticed that we were right in the middle of the La Paz marathon route. Our bus was blocked into the parking lot. I’m used to situations like this – I specialize in them, from the Vancouver marathon to Amsterdam’s King’s Day. I think the difference between me and a real tour guide like Artemio, though, is the way we handle these scheduling snafus. I wade into these things and hope we don’t get trampled. Artemio though? He sees the marathon and reaches under the bus where he stores, apparently, an entire bicycle, in case he needs one, I guess. (Note: there’s a lot of stuff stored under this bus. Artemio has somehow supplied that entire hot tamale meal I’ve mentioned and has continuously set up a little coffee and cookie table set at our bus stops). I have no doubt, that, should we encounter snow, there are skis under the bus.

At any rate, Artemio takes off on his bike as we sit on the stranded bus: “beached” in a painfully analogous sea-life way, and it’s mere moments before Artemio is back in front of the bus, riding along a police motorcycle escort he’s enlisted. I know the above picture is bad, but it’s worth seeing. We were in hysterics on the bus as our 52-person behemoth transited the marathon route.

The vaquita marina porpoise is the smallest of all cetaceans. They live only in the Sea of Cortez, where they are critically endangered to such an extreme extent that there are only between 8 and 13 left on earth.

I learned all of this in La Paz, where we spent some time at the Museo de la Ballena – whale museum – and if you find yourself down here, make sure you go.

We were given a tour by Jesus, who is so passionate and knowledgeable about marine animal biology and sustainability that Ron went right to the gift shop and bought himself this junior biologist t-shirt:

I did learn some things about whales at the museum, but you need to hear more about the vaquita first.

The vaquita was declared critically endangered in 1996. The main cause of the decrease in their numbers is illegal gill net fishing of the totoaba fish. Gill net fishing rakes in all marine life in the area of the net. It is indiscriminate and reckless fishing. What makes this even worse is that the market for totoaba fish is not for consumption – the totoaba is prized for its bladder, which is traded on the black market to make some sort of medicine in China.

Here’s a brief summary: https://porpoise.org/knowledge-base/what-is-killing-the-vaquita/

Jesus told us the story of the attempt of a team of biologists – right there in La Paz – to rescue 2 of the last dozen vaquitas and protect them from predators and fishing. The vaquitas are – like dolphins – highly intelligent and sensitive. The rescued male was so distraught that he was released right away. The rescued female was so distressed that, before they could even release her, she had a heart attack and died in the arms of the biologists.

I feel bad even sharing this story with you but it’s just so personal and specific that I want you to know about their plight.

In addition to breaking my heart, Jesus taught me a quite a few things about whales and other sea creatures, which was surprising, given the level of whale biology training I gathered while riding around on little panga boats in San Ignacio lagoon, eating nice cracker and cookie snacks provided by Road Scholar.

The above pic is the actual size of a leatherback turtle, one of 7 types of sea turtles that live in Mexico. There are 8 total sea turtle species in the world and the leatherback is the largest – they can be up to 8 feet long and weigh over 1000 pounds. They are considered a vulnerable – not endangered – species, but I thought it was interesting that Jesus said that 1 in a 1000 eggs makes it through to adulthood and that was not a bad number. 2 in a 1000 would make things all good – and apparently 4 in a 1000 and we would be massively overrun by turtles.

Numerous whale lecturers had told us that gray whales use a “wing man” system for mating – two males working together to keep the female in place, and I couldn’t really get a sense of how that played out until I saw this poster at the whale museum:

I asked Jesus about something that had been bugging me since my whale encounter back at Guerrero Negro: why was my whale as curious about me as I was about him? I gathered that no one really knows but Jesus says that, if I encountered the same whale up in Alaska, he would have nothing to do with me. It makes me want to head up to Alaska to test this theory, but I can only plan so many whale trips to “celebrate” Ron’s birthday before Ron grabs Artemio’s bike from under the bus and abandons me.

That’s it, people. I’ll leave you with two pictures I liked. One is a sunset shot with an abandoned boat in a prominent spot of the La Paz malecon. The final one is another in my continuing series of confusing signs: at the La Paz beach: you can eat, you can boat, you can sunbathe, and you can (NOT) find a reedy pond with ducks.

I’ll be back in April when we head to Spain!