…and yet, there are still remarkable, out of the way places where you really do feel far away from it all. Like the place where I am now, a Mexican island in the Gulf of Mexico. I’d tell you the name, but I don’t want everyone to know the secret of this miraculous, beautiful place. I’m selfish that way. Suffice it to say that you can see from one side of the island to the other; there is no pavement, there are no cars; the water is about 85 degrees and clear and clean; and the people are warm and welcoming.

This morning I hopped on a boat with my dive buddy, Peter, and we motored out about an hour and a half into the Gulf to go snorkeling with whale sharks. Do you know them? They’re the largest fish in the ocean, but calm and gentle. And did I mention large? We swam with two, the second of which was 25, maybe 30 feet long…but allowed us close enough to touch it, if we wanted to. At one point I managed to swim alongside the animal and make eye contact with it; its eye was about the size of my fist. From the front, I saw an enormous mouth, about as wide as my outspread arms. Looking down the body, I couldn’t see the tail…until I drifted a bit, or the shark swam a bit, and I passed over a striking black body with white spots and a massive, powerful tail. A couple of remoras were hanging on for the ride, and schools of small silver fish were hanging out around the whale’s mouth-hoping, I suppose, for some sort of plankton spillage. (Any naturalists out there who could inform me what was really going on?)

The whale sharks weren’t the only remarkable creatures feeding on the plankton at the top of the warm sea; there were also manta rays gliding along. Diving earlier on this trip, I’d seen some eagle rays feeding, and they are beautiful, unearthly creatures. But the manta rays are so large, it’s a little hard to conceive of; I’d guess the wingspan of one we saw was a good fifteen-feet across.

More to come…