We'll ignore Friday's meaningless dirge on Wall Street for the moment, focusing instead on the seasonal delights of Baja whale-watching. The following is a first-hand report from my sister Linda, a San Francisco attorney who was recently in Mexico visiting some old friends. She got first dibs on the writing genes in my family, so don't be surprised if you find yourself hankering to visit the Baja after you've imbibed this marvelously atmospheric piece. She writes as follows: This has been a remarkable experience. Las ballenas are very different from you and me--and yet, they're willing to meet us as close to halfway as we can both get. For out part, to meet them, small groups of us went out on San Ignacio Lagoon in pangas, which are about the size of life guard boats. We were surrounded by the gray whales that go there to calve and mate--and store up on plankton for the return trip to the Bering Sea. They spout, breach and the males spyhop --poke their heads up out of the water, presumably to check out what's going on. (Click on picture to enlarge) For whatever mysterious reason, or absence of reason, the females and babies are willing to make contact with humans. The babies come up to the boats and let us touch them--scratch them on the head and under the chin--sometimes the mothers push them up on their backs, and sometimes the mothers want to play too. It's an indescribable sensation to touch these creatures, which apparently want to be touched and also could easily flip the boats we're in, but don't. One mother kept going under our boat, even occasionally bumping it, but she never turned us over, and for some reason, I never felt threatened by her 14-foot whale self, or by
LATEST TRADES
