Máncora

Advice from the British Foreign Office was to avoid Columbia and Ecuador. Not the whole of each country but certainly the bits we were intending to visit. Instead, we had two sea days. Life was quiet. We crossed the equator. Naturally, Poseidon came on board to gives his blessing to the initiates. Diane and I stayed well out of the way. I felt there should have been some sort of party for those doing pole-to-pole. Didn’t happen. We had a couple of nice glasses of wine in the bar.

Then we arrived at Máncora in northern Peru. Later, I discovered that we were the first cruise ship to ever call at Máncora. Of course, we don’t think of ourselves as a cruise ship. It is an expedition ship. But with three nice restaurants, a bar and comfortable cabins it could easily be mistaken for a cruise. There was nowhere to moor up. We had to anchor off. First task of the day was whale watching.

The whale watching boats right came up to the Amundsen so that we could step on directly. About forty people to a boat. It was cramped. A bit too cramped for me. I need a bit of space to swing the camera around. Felt like every shot I took had someone or something in the way. In the end I did manage a few photographs but it was awkward. There were whales. That was the main thing. Over the course of a couple of hours we spotted two humpback whales with calves. They behaved very differently from the humpbacks we had seen in Iceland. The mature animals were very sedate unlike their offspring who both kept leaping into the air. A breaching humpback whale, even a smaller young one, is quite a sight. Difficult to photograph in the best of circumstances. I needed to guess where they were going to pop up. If I stood up it was a lot quicker and easier to bring the camera to bear. But then someone would complain that I was in their way. It was great to see some whales. It always it. But this particular trip was also a bit frustrating.

In the afternoon, we could use the RHIBs to go ashore. There was a little jetty which made landing easy enough for Diane. We had a short walk down the beach. Máncora, population 10,000, is a resort town. The Pan-American Highway is the main street. It is a popular surfing destination amongst Peruvians but not so well known further afield. The beach was busy. People were swimming, driving jet skis, surfing and just lazing around. We had a beer and wandered back to the jetty. Waiting for the RHIB back to our ship I saw frigate birds, boobies, pelicans, cormorants, and large turtles. A fisherman was cutting up fish at the end of the pier. He was throwing unwanted fish bits alternately to the local dogs sitting patiently around him and the giant turtles swimming under the deck.