We FINALLY had our Whale Shark encounter...something I've wanted to do for years and something that George has wanted to do since he was a little boy and learned (in the Guiness Book of World Records) that they are the largest fish on earth. We went with a small group 2 hours off the shore of Cancun.. past Isla Mujeres and Isla Contoy. The water was like glass...disturbed only by an occasional giant manta ray (the mantas themselves were 8-10 feet across). It wasn't long before we spotted several whale sharks. The one we swam with (tagged #662 by the Mexican Whale Shark Project) was a 25-30 foot female. Simply awesome. We took turns swimming with her for hours as she fed on plankton at the surface. Her tail, from top to bottom, stood almost 8 feet tall (and when it brushed up against George he said it was like bumping into a brick wall). It's difficult to get a sense of her size from most of these photos, but you can see our guide scraping the barnacles from her tag in one of the last photos.
just simply breathtaking....
xoxo, amy
