My “wet suit” – ie long underwear and wool socks.
As we left Ensenada Grande en route to Isla San Francisco,
we decided to take a small side trip to Los Islotes to swim with the seals there, something we intended to do before the transmission fell out. It was
early in the morning and less than an ideal day. Cold, windy, grey, cold…very
cold. The wind was blowing from the South, so we sought shelter on the north
side of the island. The mooring balls were too small to hold our boat in the
wind and waves and it was too deep to anchor comfortably (around 60 feet), so
we decided to take turns motoring around in circles while the other swam with
the juvenile seals.
We debated whether or not we actually wanted to jump into
the 60 degree water at 8:30 am on such a cold day. Did I mention it was cold?
I’ve gained a fair amount of weight on this trip (mostly as a result of my over consumption of Mexican
pastries, which aren’t even that good), but that barely insulates me in the
cold water down here. Eventually we both decided to suck it up and go for it.
We donned our polypropylene long underwear and wool socks (which Jeff refers to as our Pacific Northwest wetsuits). If the extra clothing didn’t physically insulate us, it helped to prepare us mentally and keep us warm while we hesitated to jump in.
Once I was “properly” dressed, I then had to calm the
nerves. Jumping into the water with seals kind of freaks me out. It’s totally
irrational and somewhat unrelated…but a 20/20 I once saw had an hour long
special on how some women had been molested by captive dolphins (maybe it was only 20 minutes, but still). It’s
plagued me since I was like 12.
Dolphins aren’t seals and these seals weren’t captive…but it’s hard to reason
with illogical fears. Ask me about the sea otter in Norway sometime.
But you only live once (YOLO!) and we knew that we would
regret it if we didn’t jump in. It turns out that juvenile seals are just about
the cutest, sweetest, most outgoing creatures you could ever hope to meet.
Curious, kind, playful. I uploaded some video. You can hear me scream a couple
of times and apologize at least once (for grazing a seal with my flipper). Jeff
was more daring than I; he dove with them and was more lively. I just swam
around in circles.
Jeff and I both agreed that this was maybe one of the
coolest experiences we’ve had to date.