Day 394 – Mancora
Blue Whale Watching and Swimming with Sea Turtles
Today I woke up with my left eye looking like I just got out of a fight. However, we didn’t have time to contemplate this, as we had a 6.30am pick up for our tour.
At 6:20am, I got a call in Spanish but I had no idea what the man said. We assumed he was here. We went outside our hotel, Casamar. There was no one there. The guy was still on the phone, so I added him on Whatsapp and then shared my live location with him.
A little later a taxi rocked up and the driver had a photo with our names. During this time, my wife had walked down the street looking for a vehicle. Now I had to go find her. After a few minutes I found her walking back towards the hotel.
We got into the empty taxi. The taxi continued to pick up another family. Here we had to wait around 10 minutes, as the family was not ready. Then at the next hotel, we had to wait for another 10 minutes for one guy. He looked like he had just woken up. In the taxi, he pulled down the sun visor and started to fix his hair.
Just after 7am, we started driving towards the pier for our whale watching tour. We had booked the tour the day before with Turismo Zavaleta for 90 PEN ($39.97 AUD) per person (p/p). The tour included swimming with the turtles, which we didn’t want to do. However, none of the tours were just for whale watching. The whale watching season is typically between the middle of July to the end of October.
We arrived at the pier of Los Organos at 7.30am and got into the boat with another 25 people. We were the only English speakers on the tour. The guide could not speak English either. There were around 4-5 other boats that also went out.
Nice houses along the way.
Whale Watching
In less than 15 minutes of driving into the ocean we were side by side with a Blue Whale. We never saw the full size at one time as it was just slightly surfacing, but it looked incredible and massive. The tail alone looked so sublime.
We went along with the blue whale for a while, before it disappeared under the water. Then we went to what looked like a former oil rig or similar, that was now home to hundreds of birds and a handful of really large seals.
After this we went around the bay looking for whales again, without any luck. As the captain turned around, he must have gotten a call over the radio. The boat turned around and in the distance, we could see a pair of Blue Whales jumping out of the water!
We and another few boats were trying to follow the action. However, we were never able to get too close, and after 5 minutes of the detour, our captain turned around. From a distance, the whales kept jumping out of the water and splashing down. It was super hard to take photos, since they were so far away and our boat was always moving.
This photo was provided by the tour guide, who also took photos on the day
Instead of more whales, we were rewarded with a cyclone of birds diving into a fish frenzy. We later found out that the fish frenzy was most likely happening due to the dolphins that we could see in the area! It was amazing to see.
Turtle Swim
Then we were getting to swim with the turtles. We didn’t know that we could have bought our snorkelling mask. You could rent just the mask for 5 PEN ($2.22 AUD) per mask. We were one of the few people to rent it. Everyone else went into the water without eye coverage.
Once we stopped, the captain started to cut up a fish and throw it into the water. There was already a sea turtle around the boat as soon as we stopped.
It soon became a feeding frenzy with at least 5 massive sea turtles swimming around the boat. We got into the water, and the sea turtles were so close to us. They got so close in fact, at time I had to push them away after they swam into me. The act of pushing them was more pushing me away from them, since they are massive.
It was sad to see the guide and some of the tourists actively chasing the animals to touch them. My wife is still convinced that she didn’t like the experience since the animals, even though wild, were fed and touched by people.
My impression was a little different. A part of me felt dirty (the water isn’t the cleanest either) for doing this at the time, because I didn’t like the fact that the animals were bought in and fed just for tourism. But I don’t see a difference with a zoo that has feeding times or even the Hurghada Submarine (Day 253) or some Great Barrier Reef tours (performed before this trip). The only difference was that the guides were feeding the animals, and we didn’t touch them.
All that being said, I wouldn’t do the turtle swim again. The whale watching was still amazing though. I really wish a company would start a tour with only whale watching. That being said, it’s only seasonal, so they may go bankrupt during the rest of the year.
We arrived back at the pier at Los Organos, to see a floating island set up, with people were swimming around. Of course, more sea turtles were here as they were being fed.
As we were getting off the boat, the tour guide who mainly ignored us due to the language barrier, got a local tourist who spoke some English to ask us if we would like a private tour. I thought it was ridiculous for him to ignore us for the last couple of hours and then take us on a tour without being able to communicate with us. He didn’t ask anyone else from what we could see.
Back in the pier, we found the original taxi driver who had picked us up. He dropped everyone in reverse order. We were back at the hotel just after 12.30pm.
After the tour
After the tour we headed into town to buy bus tickets (night bus to Guayaquil with Civa). Afterwards, we went to buy lunch from the market. Our hotel had recommended a restaurant Cheff Benitez on the 2nd floor. It was empty, but we tried it and we were not disappointed.
Then we chilled for the rest of the day and tried to plan our next adventure.