The Traveling Widower

Category: photography

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  • The Long Way Down – Baja Part II

    February 23, 2026

    A whale skeleton displayed outdoors, surrounded by a wooden fence, with a building visible in the background under a clear blue sky.
    Grey Whale Skeleton outside the Whale Watch Visitor Center

    I’ve only been to Mexico two times – the first time was when Jan and I did our first international trip (we did live in Texas for a while….that’s sort of another country) and it was quite an experience. Puerto Vallarta, in 1982. Another strange story to tell some other time. Traveling there by plane was pretty simple. We did not even need a passport. This time of course, a passport was required, and driving requires going through Mexican customs, which I had heard could be a harrowing experience

    A soldier in camouflage uniform and a helmet stands outside a building, holding a military rifle.

    Our group was spread into two vans, and we drove off together for the short trip to the border from the hotel. Thankfully, It was a quick and uneventful experience – there were a few armed soldiers standing around, but all we had to do was have our luggage x-rayed and our passports stamped, and off we went. No different than what they do in any international or domestic airport.

    We then headed off to Ensenada, driving along on a really nice highway through parts of Tijuana, and then along the beautiful coast. It was interesting seeing “The Wall”, and then the strange mix of beautiful expensive housing interspersed with more ramshackle types of dwellings close by. I wish I could have taken a few pictures – there was one house we passed that looked like it was made of stacked plywood, three stories high, and had a nice table with chairs up on the very small roof. No railings. Great view, just make sure you don’t lean back.

    Welcome sign to Ensenada in Spanish, with palm trees and a clear blue sky in the background.

    It was a short ride to Ensenada, maybe an hour – really pretty along the coast, and then into the city. The airport is, well, not much of an airport. It’s a military base, with a very small terminal that services a puddle-jumper airline, ASG, that flies to all the small villages in Baja. This was not quite LAX – no conveyer belts, no kiosks, no lounges, restaurants, bars, or anything else. Just a shack with a 100 year old scale to weigh your baggage, and a small terminal with seating and bathrooms that had not been cleaned in a few weeks. 

    Passengers waiting outside a small metal building labeled "Aerotransport ASG Guerrero" with luggage and backpacks, surrounded by trees.
    Check-in line. No kiosks, no conveyer belts
    View of a military airbase building with blue accents and large windows, featuring an airplane wing in the foreground, under a clear blue sky.
    Ensenada Airport Terminal

    We had been assigned two planes, one a single engine Caravan which can carry 12 or so passengers  – this was the regularly scheduled plane and carried some locals who were returning to Isla Cedros with their purchases from Costco. Either that or snacks for the flight. Myself, and five others, were on a small two-engine plane, chartered specifically for our group. I think it was a Cessna 402, not that it matters. It flew and landed. That’s all that counted for me.

    A small aircraft with a black and white design parked on an airport tarmac, with a control tower and green fields in the background.

    I have not flown on a small plane since graduate school, over fifty years ago – I recall one of the students kissing the ground after we landed. I seemed to have blanked the rest of that trip from memory (something to do with geoanticlines) but still have a fear of flying in anything smaller than a 737. But, it was the only fast way to Guerrero Negro, so I said a few prayers, and boarded the plane. Luckily, I got the seat by the very narrow entry hatch – sort of like having the emergency exit row in a regular plane – extra leg room. Once we were all settled in, the pilot fired up the two engines, and we headed down the runway. I decided to capture the moment on my phone 

    It was an exciting take off, banking quickly over the beach and out over the ocean. The view was quite nice – I quickly forgot why I was so afraid of the flight, and settled in (there was no seat back) to enjoy the view of the Baja coast as we headed south. I think everyone was waiting for the food and drink service to begin. Now where was the flight attendant?

    Interior view of a small plane with four passengers seated and engaged in conversation, showing the cockpit area in the front.
    Seating was cozy…I was in First Class. I blurred the faces.

    The flight went by fast (it was a faster plane than the Caravan) – after about 2 hours, we turned inland over the lagoon – really interesting views of the wind-swept dunes. The area surrounding the town of Guerrero Negro was pretty much desolate – I thought that the cavern I visited last year in the Mojave Desert was the middle of nowhere. This would be the end of the road to nowhere

    Aerial view of a small town surrounded by vast desert land, with a wing of an aircraft in the foreground.
    Aerial view of a sandy landscape meeting the ocean, featuring textured sand patterns with a clear blue sky above and distant land on the horizon.
    Aerial view of a small desert town featuring distinct buildings and a large Mexican flag, surrounded by sparse landscape.

    The airport was about what you would expect for a small town in a remote location – a runway (sort of paved), a small hanger, a couple of outhouses, and a small cafe. More than what Ensenada had. 

    A person wearing colorful leggings boards a small airplane using a stairway, while another individual in an orange vest stands nearby on the tarmac under a blue sky.
    A person walking towards a small aircraft with the tail visible, parked at an airport. In the background, there are people near a cafeteria and some trees under a blue sky.
    A wide view of a parking area with several vehicles, including cars and a large military truck. In the background, there is a white and blue building, and people are gathered near it under a clear blue sky.

    The van from the whale camp was waiting for us – the staff loaded up our luggage on top, and we managed to cram everyone in. I drew the short straw, and had to hang half on the edge of one seat. Not exactly comfortable for a long drive on unpaved roads leading through the salt ponds down to the beach. Ouch. I guess I should mention something about the salt ponds. The main source of income and employment for this town is salt production – there are large evaporation ponds along the edge of the Ojo de Liebre lagoon, and the dried salt is scraped up and processed locally, for distribution around the world. It’s a big business – the largest industrial sea salt operation in the world. Really. 

    The road eventually reached the whale watch visitor center (more on that later), and we continued down the road, passing the rental camping spots, each of which had a porta-potty and a thatched roof, open sided hut. And each had some sort of recreational camping vehicle with the owners sitting in beach chairs, adult beverages in hand. Very strange. They all drive down here to see the whales, and watch the sunsets I guess. They all looked pretty relaxed. I was half expecting to see all these folks wearing tie-dyed t-shirts, dancing to Grateful Dead music.

    Finally, after another mile of driving, we reached the whale camp. What an amazing setup. The owner, Keith Jones, has been doing this for 30 years – extending and improving the camp along the way. There are a variety of “cabins”, each made of plywood and tarps, some located along the edge of the beach, others scattered along the trail leading up to the communal dining/kitchen structure. There are porta-potties in a few places, open washing areas (hands, brushing teeth), a couple of communal showers, and paths marked with solar lights. There were also a few larger lights, powered by generators. The amazing thing about the camp is that it has to be torn down after the whale season is over – every structure is disassembled, and stored away locally until the next season. That’s a lot of work. Each cabin is on the primitive side – two very comfortable beds, a small table, and a very small electric heater (only for a few hours in the AM and PM). I upgraded to a cabin + shower – it looked like a Tuff Shed with another plywood shed added to it. Primitive but functional and surprisingly comfortable. My wife would never have done this, but I’m OK with roughing it once in a while. 

    An orange-colored cabin with a brown door, situated on sandy terrain under a clear blue sky.
    My cabin – the add-on section is the shower room. The path on the left leads up to the dining building.

    Here are a few photos of the camp

    A campsite with several colorful tents and cabins facing a serene body of water during sunset.
    A group of people gathered in a sandy area near beige dome-shaped tents under a clear blue sky.
    A pathway illuminated by lamps in a secluded outdoor area at night, with a distant building and starry sky.
    Row of pink dome-shaped cabins on a sandy beach with a clear blue sky.
    View from the beach

    After the van was unloaded, we met the camp staff and had a brief orientation – we then wandered off to our assigned cabins, and then made our way up to the dining building. This was another pop-up structure – lots of tables and basic seating (plastic or folding chairs), a bunch of games, books on whales and Baja geology and most important of all, a really nice bar – the woman doing the bartending made excellent margaritas. I was supposed to avoid alcohol for a while, but what the heck. It was a long trip. The staff was wonderful, and it was a really interesting group – mostly from California, but a few who traveled a long way to get here. All really nice, very friendly and a lot of fun. Things were looking up for the trip after the almost disastrous beginning for me. My heart seemed to be behaving normally – I had been checking my pulse (on the watch) regularly during the trip, and the BPM was pretty much normal most of the time.

    After dinner, everyone wandered off to their huts – the staff placed small, rechargeable lamps in every cabin, along with a camping toilet – very important for those of us who make a regular trip to the bathroom at 3 in the morning. Once the generators go off at night, the place is absolutely silent. Falling asleep was not a problem.

    Oh…and of course there were beautiful sunsets there.

    A serene sunset over a calm body of water, with silhouettes of distant mountains in the background.

    Breakfast was at 6:30, and we were leaving for the boats at 7:30 sharp – I had all the camera gear and my clothing ready to go. It was a long, very strange trip, but I was finally going to see the whales up close and personal. 

  • Travel Is Complicated…Who Knew?

    Entrance to the Traveling Widower Travel Agency featuring a dark door, a sign indicating 'Photographic Gallery Inside', and a decorative light fixture.

    February 19th, 2026

    I’m not really starting a travel agency but I feel like I could run one of late since that’s all I seem to have been doing the past few days..weeks…months. As I strolled along a trail on my daily walk/limp the other day,  I started thinking about how making travel arrangements has changed over the past half century  (I’m really old).

    When I first started working, back in 1978, we actually had travel agencies that took care of everything – you picked up a phone (a land line of course), told a real person where you wanted to go, and magically, an envelope with tickets and an itemized itinerary showed up on your desk or mail box. As online capabilities for reserving airlines and hotels appeared a decade or two later, the burden of travel reservations slowly moved away from travel agencies to the travelers. Hotels and airlines ramped up on reward programs, which likely accelerated the migration for both corporate and personal travel to online reservations. Reaching frequent flyer goals, such as 100K with United, became something of a game for IT consultants –  increasing points outweighed getting to your destination so that flying to Chicago from Denver with stops in Seattle and Fargo made perfect sense. 

    When we first got married (1975…I told you I was really old), vacation travel for us was just hopping in a car and staying with friends and family, or looking for the cheapest hotels. We rarely traveled anywhere by plane, and there were travel books that listed hotels along highways and various destinations. AAA was great for planning trips.  Once we both started working, we relied on our company travel agencies until the Internet made everything available online, and then we both became pretty adept at making reservations. We rarely did long-term planning – sometimes we just decided (usually after a glass or two of wine) to head off to somewhere – Ireland, Italy, Maui. No problem – we just pulled out our laptops and coordinated on hotels, cars and flights. The one time we used a travel agency, we wound up in separate seats on a long flight to Tahiti. But after that experience, we always handled all of our own reservations. 

    Jan and I were a pretty good team at most everything we did together, except for tennis. That’s a long and painful story which I’ll share if I ever start drinking again. So now that she’s gone, travel reservations are just one more formerly shared task that I now have to do solo. Bummer. Given the number of trips I have been scheduling, this has become something of a necessary burden, especially for some of the more distant destinations (now that I’m a world traveler). 

    A table with a National Geographic Expeditions brochure featuring a woman and a llama, several invoices, and a mug.

    Up until recently, I’ve been focusing on just two tour companies for my adventures, and both of these, National Geographic/Lindblad and Natural Habitats/World Wildlife Federation, have travel agents who take care of pretty much everything. It’s just like the good old days – I speak to a real person, provide them with what I’m looking for in terms of flights and they take care of everything. For example, on my Grizzly Bear trip with Natural Habitats, I wanted to get there a day early to see a bit of Kodiak on my own, and then stay in Anchorage for a few days rather than heading straight home. The Natural Habitats agent worked it all out for me. All I have to do is figure out where I want to go in Kodiak and Anchorage. I did something similar with my first trip to Iceland, arriving two days early so I can visit a weird volcanic chamber, and maybe go snorkeling in the continental rift. All I had to do was reserve my extra-curricular activities – National Geographic took care of the rest. 

    So up until now, my life as my own travel agent has been pretty easy. But now I’m making my own life more complicated. There are quite a few touring/cruise companies that cover the Arctic and Antarctic, and not all of the smaller ones have their own travel agency. The hard part though is comparing each of the tours – how large are the ships, number of passengers, solo cabin size, comfort features on the ship. The larger ships are usually more luxurious, but with more passengers, the excursions are more crowded and require staggered scheduling. The smaller ships on the other hand, may not have as many creature comforts (hot tubs for example), but you get to spend more time doing what you came for. Finding reviews is important as well – I was keen on going with one particular company for the Svalbard trip, which emphasized how they welcomed solo travelers on their web site. The reviews told a different story, so I went with another small-ship company.

    One complication with the small companies is trip insurance – it’s a necessary rip-off, since most foreign destinations require at least minimal coverage for emergency medical and evacuation services (including shipping your body home…never mind, lets not go there). The larger companies offer insurance as part of a package, which you pay with the final invoice. With smaller companies, you are on your own, and usually have to pay within 15 days of the initial deposit. Ouch.

    So now that I’ve settled on this one particular cruise company (Poseidon) for two of my trips to obscure, far away places, I’ve discovered that there are some good reasons for using travel agencies. The first trip I booked with Poseidon travels to the Falkland and South Georgia Islands (penguins!!), and starts and ends from Ushuaia. Now that was easy with National Geographic/Lindblad – they had a charter flight from Santiago Chile, where we stayed at a Four Seasons for one night. As it turns out, all other scheduled flights go out of Buenos Aires, and for most of them, you have to switch airports. OK, complicated but I can figure that one out – it may require an overnight at a hotel airport, but I’m good with that. I’ve already done that a couple of times, where I fly to a major hub, stay at a nice hotel near the airport, and then take an early flight to my destination. That way I’m not as rushed and exhausted when I get there. 

    The next trip later in 2027, is a nightmare. I really wanted to go to Svalbard, Norway after seeing a series on Apple TV, The Long Way Home (worth watching). This is truly one of the most remote spots in the world, accessible by plane via either Oslo or some really small city in Norway (Tromso). That makes it hard enough. But (there’s always a but for me) I’ll be finishing off a Natural Habitat photography tour in Iceland just before the start of the Poseidon one, and will be leaving from Reykjavik Iceland. There is no easy way to get to Svalbard – I will have to stay overnight somewhere in Norway, and may wind up stopping in Copenhagen to get there. I have a long time to figure it out, since I’m not leaving until July 4th, 2027…but I’m already worrying about it.

    A few people have asked me how I manage all the travel arrangements for the many trips I’ve scheduled so far, and they are usually surprised that I’m doing this all on my own. I kind of surprise myself sometimes. It’s time consuming and sometimes frustrating, especially now that I have eight trips in 2026 to manage (…there’s still a few gaps), and then another five so far in 2027. I keep spreadsheets which lists costs, important dates and task reminders, but even with that, I find myself having to dedicate entire days sometimes for the initial scheduling of a trip, and then follow ups when I have to make payments or schedule airline travel. I have inserted automated reminders in my calendar for payment dates, and spend a lot of time checking out various excursions for my free days on the trips. For the first Iceland trip, I had already booked the magma chamber (another cave) trip, and had hoped to do a really weird one – snorkeling in a continental rift zone. In really cold water. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the tour operators do not book anyone with any type of heart disease. Kind of makes sense – that’s why I have declined the “polar plunge” opportunity twice. So I’m doing a half-day tour to see Puffins instead. Safer I guess, and those little guys are so cute. Sort of like penguins that can actually fly.

    Two puffins standing on green moss with pink flowers, near a body of water.
    Not my photo…I wish it was

    I’m not really complaining about any of this – it’s kind of hard to bitch about traveling this often, to so many strange places, and it’s not like I’m pressed for time any given day when I’m not traveling. In some ways, it is sort of like a work replacement, without the free food.

    Two days and I’m off to Baja and the friendly Grey Whales. I did not get to pet one the last time I was down there. This time for sure.

    A gray whale breaching the surface of the water with a mountainous landscape in the background.

    Peace