Guest Sharon Johnson and her husband are cruising again with HAL, this time on Zaandam’s 21-Day Collectors’ Voyage to Mexico and Hawaii. Sharon will chronicle their cruising experience for us on the blog. Enjoy!

Feb. 14, 2013:
Today Al and I took the “Deluxe Coastal Cruise with Whale Watching” tour while we were in Cabo San Lucas. The gray and humpback whales winter in Cabo. The gray whales migrate from Cabo San Lucas to Alaska for the summer and come back to the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula to have their babies. This is the third time we have been in Cabo on a HAL cruise ship, but the only time when we have been the only ship anchored in the bay near the pier in Cabo. We have never been so close to the town of Cabo San Lucas and its scenic peninsula. Our tour met in the Ocean Bar where we received a sticker indicating our tour. When the tender was ready, they released us to go down to the tender platform. It was a very short ride to the dock in Cabo San Lucas. Since we were last in Cabo, we noticed that there have been more hotels, timeshares, bars and restaurants built. Cabo now has a huge entertainment center in the center of town. – Sharon & Al

Our tour boat was a double decker catamaran. There were plenty of places for everyone to sit. They served us drinks several times and also gave us snacks–all was included in the price of the excursion. Several people felt that they couldn’t do enough for us. After leaving the dock in Cabo, the catamaran sailed out of the inner harbor and did scenic cruising along the Baja California Peninsula past Lover’s Beach and El Arco Natural Rock, they sailed around Land’s End (the southern-most tip of the Baja Peninsula) into the Pacific Ocean. After a short ride into the ocean, whales were sighted. First we saw a mother humpback whale and her baby and then we spotted several gray whales and their babies. We spent several hours around the southern tip of the peninsula looking for and photographing whales before it was time to return to the dock in Cabo San Lucas. On our way back to the dock, we spotted pelicans flying after fishing boats. But the funniest sight was a sea lion that hitched a ride on a passing fishing boat. He sat on some sort of ledge and begged for some scraps. Since everyone had a good opportunity to see and photograph not only the whales, but their tails as they dove — everyone including us agreed that this was an excellent whale-watching tour.

A nice shot of El Arco Natural Rock in the background.

Gray Whale mother with her calf.

Zaandam as seen from Land’s End.

Sea Lion hitching a ride.