Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Gorda Bank &

Cabo San Lucas

After running through the night, we’ll awake off the coast of the southern Baja California peninsula. As always, when we’re at sea, you’re encouraged to spend some time on deck, scanning for marine mammals and seabirds. Later in the morning, we’ll arrive at an area known as Gorda Bank, where we will look for humpback whales.

During lunch, we’ll arrive at the bustling port of Cabo San Lucas. This very developed town was nothing more than a tuna cannery and a few small houses on the beach, when Steinbeck and Ricketts were here in the early 1940s. Plan to disembark right after lunch if you’d like to join us for snorkeling at Playa Chilenos, or the trip into San Jose del Cabo. We’ll be at the dock all afternoon, so you can come and go as you please, if you choose not to join one of the aforementioned activities. We’ll depart this evening, in time for a sunset view of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, and the famous arch at Land’s End.

0730: Wake-up call & morning stretch class, on the Bridge Deck

0800: Breakfast is served

Morning at sea, searching for wildlife

1230: Lunch is served

1330: Disembark for snorkeling and San Jose del Cabo excursions

1700: All aboard & underway for Land’s End

1830: Evening recap

1900: Dinner is served

Sunrise: 0700 Sunset: 1805

Low Tide: 0822 1.8 High Tide: 1301 3.2 Low Tide: 1928 1.6

“The great rocks on the end of the Peninsula are almost literary. They are a fitting Land’s End, standing against the sea, the end of a thousand miles of peninsula and mountain. Good Hope is this way too, and perhaps we take some of our deep feelings of termination from these things, and they make our symbols. The Friars stood high and protective against an interminable sea.”

- John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez