The Pacific in all its glory


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Oceans and Seas » Pacific
January 31st 2012
Published: January 31st 2012
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Yet another lazy day at sea today so we went to 2 lectures this morning. The first was

all about the whales and dolphins that inhabit these waters off the west coast of

Mexico. And we were really glad we went because now we know that the two grey things

that looked a bit like acrobatic turtles swimming the wrong way up were actually the

flippers of grey whales. Apparently three quarters of the world's grey whales winter

here as well as lots of hump back whales, the blue whale and the whale shark. We also

learnt lots about bottle nosed dolphins who then played their part perfectly by turning

up at least 3 times toay. The most spectacular sighting was another of those massive

pods of hundreds of dolphins. You could see a patch of sea almost boiling and it turned

out to be hundreds of dolphins with lots of them do somersaults and twists and turns and

all the things you normally only get to see at a water park. Unfortunately we'd left

our camera on macro so it was great for anything up to about 8 inches away. Sadly the

dolphins were slightly further off than that! But we did our best to photograph them

and so if you go to Facebook you can see Richard's picture of them. It's a pretty

amazing sight.

The second lecture of the morning was Gerald Scarfe again, this time talking about his

work with Pink Floyd and Disney. He is far more talented than I had ever realised

previously and is very open about his views on the various politicians and royals that

he has drawn during his long career with the Sunday Times and other publications. He is

a brilliant speaker and clearly takes great delight in shocking some of the Americans on

board with some of his more controversial pictures. It was a great use of an hour's

time.

The rest of the day was given over to the usual hard work on board a cruise ship:

eating, drinking, swimming, reading, listening to music (with the extra chore of trying

to decide what the heck to listen to!). Tonight we had to go and say hello to the

Captain. Not that the fancy dan cocktail scene is really where we fit in best but the

champagne was free so why not.

It's another sea day tomorrow so lots more scanning the ocean for sightings of turtles

and dolphins etc before we arrive in Cabo San Lucas on Wednesday to go snorkelling on

the coral reefs.

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