Whale tales (from others)

This is just a short post about some whale encounters that have occurred with our friends.  We've encountered quite a few whales ourselves in our travels, but never very close and never with very good pictures/videos.  But I found these stories and pictures so interesting that I decided to share them.

Big Blue Encounter

First, a friend of ours from Berkeley, Bill Roberts, had chartered a trimaran out of Puerto Escondido (about 100 miles north of us) a few weeks ago.  His son Brock captured this video of a blue whale diving just below their boat.  It's only a few seconds long, but amazing to watch.  We will be up in that area in just a few weeks, and we are hoping to not have such a close encounter!

Whale Rescue

Second, we have some good friends aboard a boat called Del Viento.  They are a family with two girls (ages 9 & 12, I believe).  We have followed their blog for a couple years, and finally we got to meet them here in La Paz this winter.  The are all really wonderful people, and they have a great blog -- especially for kid-boats, because Michael collects links to blogs of cruising families.  Tessa loves playing with Frances and Eleanor.

Tessa asking Frances to come play with her some more ... after
she had already played with her for at least twenty minutes!
Frances is a great sport and plays with Tessa much more than
we would expect!  Michael and Windy are in the background;
sorry Eleanor that I didn't get you in this picture!

Anyway, back to the whale tale...  about three years ago the Del Viento crew encountered a whale stranded by fishing nets.  Michael wrote an amazing pair of blog posts about the encounter.  This occurred close to Isla Isabel, which we visited back in January (the same time of the year they were there in this story).  You have to read the blog to learn how it all turned out!