Eli Martinez

Travel Day...The Beautiful Chaos Begins

It always starts the same, early alarms, groggy eyes, last-minute gear checks, and the quiet hum of anticipation.

Today is a travel day… We are Mexico Bound!

The beginning of another adventure into the unknown. 

And while I’ve done this hundreds of times, it never feels routine. 

There’s always a mix of emotion swirling just below the surface.

There’s the excitement, of course, the thrill of what’s ahead. 

The chance to see old animal friends in wild places. 

To meet new people. 

To witness the kind of moments you can’t predict and could never plan.

But there’s also the tug. 

The ache of leaving home.

The heaviness in the chest when you close the door behind you, knowing it’ll be weeks before you open it again.

You say goodbye to the familiar rhythm of daily life, and step into the rush of airports, red-eye flights, and border crossings.

And then… you arrive… Damn, I love Mexico.

The warm air hits you the moment you step outside the airport, thick with ocean and sun and a scent you forgot you missed.

The sounds are different. 

The language dances around you.

People smile in that way only Mexico seems to know; genuine, relaxed, present.

Even the light here feels different, like it’s been touched by salt and time.

Suddenly your body remembers why you came.

Your senses sharpen.

Your soul starts to stretch again.

That’s the magic of travel. 

It shakes the dust off.

 It strips away the predictable and throws you into presence.

You can’t coast on autopilot when everything around you is unfamiliar. 

You have to notice. 

You have to feel.

So yes, travel days can be chaotic.

Yes, they’re exhausting.

Yes, something always goes wrong, flights get delayed, luggage gets lost, you forget something important.

But still… we go.

Because the wild calls.

And something inside us answers.

Hola Mexico… Let’s see what stories you have waiting for us this time.


*New Blogs posted 3–4 times a week. (sometimes more.)
Follow along for fresh stories, trip updates, and raw moments from the wild.

Summer Run Has Begun!

A selfie in Tonga with humpback whales off Tonga.

The summer season has arrived, and for us, that means one thing… it’s time to travel.

Over the next few months, we’ll be on the road (and in the water) almost non-stop. 

From Mexico to Brazil, Canada to Alaska, and all the way to the South Pacific, this stretch of the year is the heartbeat of what we do. 

It’s wild. 

It’s exhausting. 

And it’s the most fulfilling work I could ever imagine doing.

Whale shark off Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

We’ll be diving with whale sharks off Isla Mujeres, tracking river dolphins deep in the Amazon, swimming alongside beluga whales, and spending quiet moments on land watching polar bears roam.

We’ll be heading into Alaska for the first time, a trip I’ve dreamed about for years, to experience brown bears in their element. 

Then it’s back to Brazil for jaguars and anaconda diving, before continuing on to photograph right whales along the coast. 

Jaguar in the Northern Pantanal, Brazil.

We’ll wrap the season in Tonga, for the humpback migration. 

Humpback whale mom and calf off Tonga.

 All these places, all these animals, help remind us why we fell in love with nature in the first place.

It’s a beautiful, relentless stretch of work, and I don’t take a moment of it for granted.

Because yes, we’re photographing wildlife. 

But what we’re really doing is creating space, for people to remember what it feels like to belong to the natural world again.

Polar Bear in Churchill Canada

This season, I’ve set a few personal goals.

The first: I’ll be recording daily vlogs from the field, raw, honest reflections from the wild, captured in real time.

When Wi-Fi allows, I’ll upload them to our YouTube channel and share the journey as it unfolds.

I’ve tried this before and failed, because honestly, the work is physically and emotionally exhausting.

Pink Dolphins in the Amazon River, Brazil

But I’ve always known: these places, these moments, these stories… they deserve to be seen and told the right way. 

Not polished. 

Not curated. 

But real.

We’ll also be updating The Daily’s page with trip reports from each location. 

Those will definitely go up, photos, field notes, and memories from each expedition.

Beluga Whales off Churchill Canada.

So this is your invitation, to follow along with us this summer. Daily trip reports with photos and stories, and if the internet allows… daily videos.

So please subscribe to our YouTube Channel if you haven’t already.

To feel the highs, the lows, the magic, and the grit that makes this life so alive.

I’ll be sharing it all. 

Not for show, but because this world is too wild, too beautiful, and too important to keep to myself.

Let’s begin.


*New Blogs posted 3–4 times a week. (sometimes more.)
Follow along for fresh stories, trip updates, and raw moments from the wild.

Day Two - A Total Bust!

Bull sealion. We stopped by the sealion colony off Cabo San Lucas, MX. on the way out to snap a few images.

Well, we got skunked, damn it!

It happens.

This is why we run these trips over several days because with pelagic sharks, you just never know if and when they will show up. Today they were a no-show. AND the day was perfection. The weather was beautiful, and the water visibility was an incredible deep blue. The vis looked insane. Of course, I didn’t get in to confirm it, but from the surface, it was WOW.

 All we needed was some sharks… and NADA! Nothing, no sharks showed up. 

Our group was disappointed with the makos no-show today, but that is part of the dance. You can not have good days without bad ones. It is all about time in the water and the magic is out there waiting for us.

But that is what nature sometimes does. She decides that you need a kick in the teeth, and to remind you that what we are doing is not easy. If we want to find makos to dive with, we are going to have to put in the time.

We still have three days left, thankfully, so there is time to get back out there and find some sharks to dive with. 

At the end of the day, on the way back into the marina, we stopped to watch some common dolphins jumping around and a couple of humpback whales in the middle of all that craziness. I snapped a fluke shot that looked like it might be worth sharing, and after that, we motored in and called it a day. 

We are just going to have to wait until tomorrow to find our magic… and I do not doubt that Day Three will be our day… I can feel it!

Until then my friends, thanks for reading.