A whale of a birthday

don't mess with muchacho

It blew like heck in mag bay but we held steady on our anchor. We had a trip in on the dingy to the village and brought the local capitan de puerto a tub of Nutella as an offering of respect. We cleaned the boat and read books and did Rosetta stone and Hunter and I made secret plans about a birthday cake and a plan was hatched that jon would watch "The Right Stuff" with Kai on the computer while we baked. Kai peered through the binoculars and lamented that there were no whales in Mag ay. We had all had images of a bay positively leaping with whales and we were all slightly disappointed although the many great frigate birds and hundreds of terns and pelicans and two giant ospreys that surrounded us at all times kept us busy with binoculars.
The pelicans got so noisy around us that we resorted to shooting old limes at them with Kai's slingshot. Excellent entertainment, I must say. Beats the snot out of a video game.

Pelicans be warned!

"I hope I see whales tomorrow" Kai said as we tucked him in on his last day of being nine.
So did we. We only sailed 700 miles to see them!
Kai's b-day arrived and our water-child truly had The blessing of Neptune on him. The weather was flat calm. Not a breath of wind, the sea like glass. We made him a speedy breakfast in bed and I made jon and I a thermos of Mexican coffee and we all piled into the dingy and went looking for whales.
Frigate birds soared above us. Magdelana bay shone like a mirror under us as we motored towards a sandy point the locals told us had muchos ballenas gris.
And they weren't kidding.
The first blow we saw was followed by a second, third, fourth and so on. We puttered along following the slow moving giants as they rolled along the sandy bottom scratching them selves. We were surrounded. We tried in vain to get footage on the gopro. Unfortunately what
Looked from the surface like clear water- we could see straight to the bottom ten feet below- was actually pretty silty from the motion of the giant flukes. So even though we had gone all animal planet and strapped our gopro to the extending boat hook-the actual footage was not as impressive as what we got to see." this is the best day of my life" Kai said, as we rowed along five feet from a grey whale calf.
We spent the morning in the company of giants. Then, as the sun threatened to obliterate our pasty white selves, we motored over to the village and dropped in on the only joint in town. Jose runs a little palapa( palm thatched shack) on the beach. There is no menu, only fresh lobster, shrimps, fish, tortillas and beans...and cold cervesa. What else could there possibly be? For thirty bucks we feasted Kai and the rest of us on grilled lobsters and shrimp and homemade salsa and tortillas, sodas for the kids and beer for us.

Jaun and Jose

chatting to grandma on the b-day

After that it was back to the boat and while Kai and dad snuggled in a bunk watching a movie about astronauts, hunter and I decorated the boat in drawings and poems and baked a chocolate cake decorated in jelly beans and sea shells. We grilled a couple of steaks and made baked potatoes and dug out the smuggled transformer toy we had stashed away and Kai celebrated his first double digits in fine style.

Happy 10 Kai1

Tomorrow we will wake up and...have absolutely no plan, no itinerary.
I wonder what we will do?
Fishing sounds good...