Wildlife

What we had expected on our vacation was sunshine and some relaxation time by the pool. What we hadn’t expected was a bonanza of wild and marine life. If only I’d bought the camera with the big lens! Nevermind.

First of all it has to be said that not all creatures were captured on camera however all were witnessed by everyone so there is no disputing their existence!

As we were still in north America our first sighting was an eagle as we drove from the airport to San Jose del Cabo. They were everywhere throughout our stay and, according to our cab driver, it was a fish eagle. Although we saw plenty of these across our few days this particular creature was one that did escape the camera. We’re also not 100% sure it was a fish eagle but we have no other suspects so we will run with that.

We also saw a large number of another odd shaped soaring bird which looked like this:

We’ve no clue what it is but we will rely on Russell to let us know! There were plenty of them though.

Other birds that were not particularly rare but sighted by us included the pelican (one of my own personal favorites):

And the woodpecker, who we saw at the beautiful Chileno beach:

Also at Chileno we saw a lizard of some sort:

We wouldn’t make very good wildlife commentators because, again, we have no idea what it was, other than our tour guide said it was a lizard and we agree with him!

Off the land and into the water, we saw another collection of interesting things!

The biggest sighting was one that we have no photographic evidence of as we had just gone for a walk a long the beach and didn’t take the camera, however it was, until the last morning, the most spectacular. We stood on the beach going “oooo” and “aaaahhhh” as if we were watching a July 4th firework display. What we were in fact watching, out on the horizon, was at least one and maybe several grey whales leaping out the water and crashing back in with a massive splash. It was pure chance that we had seen them – we first spotted what we thought was the blow of air shooting into the air – but then after watching a bit longer and moving a bit higher up the sandy beach we saw the whales leaping and saw lots of whale watching boats zooming towards them. Even with my best lense I’m not sure we would have got a great picture but it was amazing to see nonetheless!

Moving on to somewhat smaller aquatic life we did get a slightly imperfect picture, on our boat trip, of some “yellow fin fishes”! I’m sure they have another name but I’m not sure what it is! Here they are though:

Also on our boat trip we saw Californian sea lions a-plenty both swimming in the water and being pretty stinky on some rocks:

Away from our boat trip and on walks along the beach in the morning from the hotel we had spotted manta rays leaping out the water. They seemed to congregate each morning along the beach from our hotel and for some reason they would just leap clean out the water, do a little spin and then flop back into the water. We had initially thought they were fish but as they did their spin, mid flight we saw their flappy wings. It was very entertaining but again we managed to get no photographic evidence of the leaping. We did however get evidence of the rays and pretty spectacular (and lucky) it was too!

On our last morning we had claimed our sun loungers in the pool and while Tracy and I lay in the sun Harry and Toby went to the beach to play volleyball. After a while Tracy went to check they were ok before arriving back to tell me that there were rays in the sea playing in the waves. Harry and Toby had seen these and decided that although numerous people were watching this event it wasn’t worthy of telling their parents – they’d just carried on playing.

When Tracy and I got down to the beach we saw the amazing sight for ourselves – and it was so good that it was the single best moment of the holiday! With the waves crashing onto the beach the sun was still at a low enough angle that the light was shining clear through the waves as they rose from the sea. As it did there were tens (if not hundreds at times) of rays playing in the water and surfing their way into shore right in the middle of the wave.

Although I have used the word several times already it really was amazing to see and even more amazing was the fact that I managed to get some pictures! Because the sun was still at a fairly low angle I couldn’t see a thing on the camera screen so I just pointed at the water and kept on taking pictures! Here are a couple but there are more available here:

So there we go! That was our wildlife extravaganza! The only other creature we should mention was a nasty little wasp that lay on the beach and stung Toby when he trod on it. It was a whooper of a sting but it came out nicely although it did reduce our big brave Toby to heap of tears. Fortunately we weren’t far from the hotel so we went to the pool bar and got him a kids Pina Colada and everything in the world improved!