Another New Species - Day 6

Day 6 was a bit different from the others as we didn’t go out on the boat first thing. The forecast was for the Levanté to keep blowing for a while and die down later on, so the boat was booked from 4pm for four or five hours.

We had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, but when we went back to our room we had a bit of drama. When I opened the bathroom window a snake reared up on the windowsill. I shut the window quickly, but caught it’s tail in the window. Every time I tried to open the window to flick out the tail it reared up again. We did eventually manage to get it free without it getting inside and it slithered off down the passageway. We were then picked up at 11am and headed into Tarifa. Fran and I had planned to spend the morning in town before meeting the others just before 4 for the trip.

The first thing we did was go to the castle and had a look around and a climb on the ramparts. Much of the tower was built by Guzman el Bueno who had a son captured during one war against the muslims. The muslims told him that they would kill his son if he didn’t surrender the keys to the castle (and city), so he apparently threw down his knife and said (in Spanish I suspect) “go on then”...so they did, by slitting his throat with the knife that had been thrown down. He still refused to surrender and so to the towns people he was a hero.

After the castle (where my bag split and I bounced my 40D and 100-400 lens on the concrete) we spent the rest of the morning shopping and getting presents for people. Then when the shops started to close at 2pm we went for lunch. We both decided to have pasta at the El Torreon restaurant which was quite nice, and then had an ice cream before heading down to meet the others.

We left harbour at quarter past 4 and just 25 minutes after heading east we found a large group of Striped dolphins. They were feeding amongst the fishing boats, but we couldn’t get that close because of the fishing lines from the back, but some of them came to see us. There were a number of them swimming around the boat, along with a few Common dolphins, another new species for us.

We bobbed around in the water watching the group for about 20-25 minutes before heading off to see if we could find any sign of the Sperm whale that had been seen in the area. There was no sign of it, even though the water was flat calm and we could see a long way, so we went to look for Orca. We travelled west for just over an hour before seeing anything, and then saw some Bottlenose dolphins. We watched them for 10-15 minutes before taking up the hunt for Orca again.

We continued west and sailed amongst the Moroccan fishermen again. They had not seen any Orca, only Swordfish but there were no Pilot whales about so we were still hopeful. The problem was that the fishermen were in position, and were ready to cast their driftnets, but were waiting for dark so there was no activity.

We headed back east for another search for the Sperm whale, but again there was no sign of it although we did see some jumping Sardines on the way. It was now 10 past 8 and as we struck out for home we came upon the Striped and Common dolphins again. They were jumping all around us. We were surrounded and wherever we looked there were leaping dolphins, almost as far as the eye could see. It was an incredible sight.

After watching them for 15 minutes we had to make port, so reluctantly left them to their fun and headed back. When we returned we walked to the beach to watch the sun go down then had dinner. After that we headed back to the hotel, stopping briefly at the beach across the road to look for shooting stars and bioluminescants in the sea, before getting to our rooms around midnight.