Travel day. Today I picked up the group that is joining us for this trip. We are short two guests who sadly were locked up by their country from Israel. They were not allowed to travel here to Baja, which is heartbreaking; they were just a week away from this trip happening when their government decided it was not safe to travel. I am so sorry, guys.

This morning I left Cabo with our buddy Al who is joining us on this trip. We Ubered it to the airport to pick up our rental van. After that, we went to the airport to pick up the rest of our group joining us. In total, four guests are joining us this week. All of them eager to get out on the water and look for orcas and anything else the Ocean wishes to gift us with.

We drove to our hotel, checked in then went down to a small restaurant to eat a quick dinner and get to know each other better. Everyone joining us had traveled with me before, so I knew them, but they did not know each other. It was fun small talk and easy to see that this group of sketchy guys (inside joke), we're going get along, and it was going to be a fun week. Reports of orcas this week have been good, so I am very optimistic about our chances for a good week. We will see, tomorrow is our first day on the water, and I am super eager to get out there and start looking.

Today the reports were that the orcas spent the day in Cabo Pulmo, and the video clip I saw was insane. They captured a video of the orca breaching extremely high… talk about EPIC!

After we returned from dinner, I grabbed my topside camera and decided to see what the local bird activity was like. The place we are staying at is a small seaside town, and there seems to be a lot of birds here, so it looks like it could be fun.

After a few minutes, I encountered a cat walking across the street. Normally domestic cats do not catch my attention, nor do I ever take pictures of them. However the tail and the markings on this cat captivated me. The bob tail and the color patterns on this cat made me wonder if maybe this cats momma might have danced with a wildcat, more specifically a bobcat? I snapped a few images of it, and after studying the images it left me thinking it is part wildcat. The cats eyes are captivating, and it has tiny tuffs on its ears… so who knows? It is an amazing looking cat though.

I found a beautiful hummingbird feeding on some flowers. It was a species I had never seen before called the Xantus's hummingbird. It hung out for a little while, but then it flew off. I got a crappy image of it, but now… I really want to capture a nice shot of it, so I will be using any spare time to find it.

I also managed to find a couple of dead palm trees with some nesting woodpeckers and starlings in them. I focused my time there trying to capture some behavior images, which I am pretty happy with. I will try for more later, if I have time.

Overall it was a great day. Now we are all retired to our rooms to prep gear and get a good night's sleep… the adventure officially kicks off in the morning… FINALLY!

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you out in the world… somewhere… anywhere!