From Oaxaca, you can take a day trip to the coast for whale, dolphin and turtle watching, but that’s 6 hours plus round trip, and it just made a lot more sense to spend a few days on the coast. Another new friend, the first Andorran I’ve met, Carla, also let me know about a beautiful natural area west of Mazunte, so if I visited again, I think I’d try to do a lot more nature-focused visits. The coast also has a neat diversity of birds.
Faviola was the only marine biologist associated with the marine trips, but she never joined any to lead them, sadly. Hopefully you can zoom in to this and the next page if interested in learning more about the species along this part of the coast. If not, I’ll be posting all the trip photos on Flickr and can share a link.
The boats are zoomed onto the beach across plastic tubing and when ready to go back in, everyone pitches in to turn them around and push back in.A humpback whale!We saw a few humpbacks but this was the best shot I got. Felt like maybe just watching and enjoying would be better than trying to capture photos. Faviola said there wasn’t evidence that the earlier boats saw more, but tours from other towns left at 6a or 7a vs Mazunte’s at 8a. One researcher offers the opportunity to help him monitor humpbacks at 6a from the shore (I imagine a cliff) near Puerto Escondido, a couple hours west, so couldn’t help thinking maybe earlier is better…The dolphins tend to swim right in front of the boats so we took turns sitting at the very front. Sorry for the bit of green (I had a phone holder that partially blocked the lens sometimes). Mating olive Ridley’s turtles. We saw a lot of turtles and I worried about them getting hit when the boats were going really fast. New research indicates turtles are more social than scientists had believed. Sooo beautiful!
Wild Bee Plantings 