Best of Yucatán – Whale Sharks

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Hi out there!! 🙂

Yucatán?? Whale Sharks? What??

Whaleshark Mexico Yucatan

It’s been a while since I updated my blog – so sorry!! I will post more frequently! I promise! Pinkyswear! 🙂

If you want to fully enjoy this post about something incredible you can do in Yucatán, turn on some music which makes you feel relaxed and summerish 🙂 (how about this here? – I feel the sun on my head right now and the salty breeze on my face)

 

WELCOME TO MEXICO!

iBIENVENIDOS A MÉXICO!

Close your eyes for a moment and just let go and listen to the music! 🙂 Can you feel the breeze as well? Can you hear the waves sing for you? Imagine a yummy cocktail in your hand, a nice hat on your head, sunglasses, and warm tropical weather! You are wearing a bikini or shorts and you feel the sand between your toes?! Can you feel it? Welcome to the dream!

There will be a lot of other posts related to what to do in Mexico, let’s start with this one here! (And stay tuned and super excited, because I’m going back to Mexico this summer and I will be there not only one – but five amazing weeks!)

I went there quite some years ago but the memories are still vivid and make me day dream about it! 🙂

I stayed in Playa del Carmen for only a week – and yes among the best diving experiences I also did some touristy things, but hey who doesn’t 🙂

When I heard about the possibility to see real WHALE SHARKS I was stunned! Of course I had to meet the biggest living (and known) shark and fish in person! I signed up online and yes sigh- it was expensive, but don’t think about it. (I paid around 200usd 🙁 , BUT it was worth every single cent!)

I got picked up by a little bus pretty early in the morning and we drove North heading towards the Island Holbox (pronounced Holbosh). It was a marvellous day and the sun was already praising the day with the best sunshine. We switched to a small boat where we got life jackets and snorkel equipment. Driving on the sea is so great! We speeded up quite fast and left the coastline behind us.
Where were we headed? They had told us that we were going to see whalesharks no matter what, and if not they would return the money. So where?
Some other small boats came up on the horizon and our boat slowed down.

Far away we could see some people in the water chasing some fins (not the other way around!!), We got closer and closer, but stopped at a distance. The driver pointed at the water! There was not one whale shark at one sight but two! I felt so lucky this very moment!

I got my fins on and the mask and the lifejacket (not that I needed one, but snorkling with those is much more relaxed and fun). I was not the first to enter the water but I waited my turn and plushhhhh- I jumped into the water.

OMG are those animals big- no HUGE!!! Those that I saw were around 8 meters long and wider than I am tall O.O!!! And gosh were they fast, I had trouble keeping up with them and being careful not to get hit by their (of course huge) tail! One time I was able to swim up to its mouth and look in the enormous throat! Only plancton inside of course!

Then I got scared, and I mean really scared – Why? The whale shark decided to turn and turned towards me. When an animal or something else (like a bus) turns to you, you’d better be fast to avoid getting hit. I swam like I never swam before. Haha wow what a feeling!!
I swam back to the boat and crawled out of the water. Everyone had two turns of about 5-10 minutes with the whalesharks in the water. Seems not much? They are so fast, that you cannot keep up with them any longer than that (maybe if you are a professional swimmer or marathon runner 🙂 )

What can I tell you? Do it when you are there, spend a great day out on a boat watching and swimming with those great, great animals!

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and as always: Keep on travelling!
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Viktoria Urbanek Travel Blog Chronic Wanderlust

Grüß dich, I'm Viki!

At Chronic Wanderlust, I write about my two great passions: travelling and diving – and have been doing so since 2013.

I usually spend a solid majority of the year travelling to experience extraordinary underwater adventures, taking road trips through countries I don’t know (yet) or exploring my home country of Austria.

As a certified divemaster, passionate underwater & travel photographer, road trip enthusiast and individual traveller, I collect unique moments all over the world.

I don’t believe that severe cases of wanderlust – aka chronic wanderlust – can be cured, only treated. On this blog, I want to show you how this can best be realised.

Curious to get to know me better?