The Way of Wanderlust (24 page)

At 4:00, seven of us clambered into our Zodiac with a naturalist and a local whale guide on board. The local guides are essential: They know the waters and the ways of the whales, and they ensure that we are complying with rules established to protect the whales in the region. (In fact, these local guides are the only individuals who have the official Mexican government permits that allow whale-watching.) 

As we bounced over the waves, the fresh air and sea spray swooshing our faces, Carlos, the broad-smiling, big-hearted, encyclopedic Mexican naturalist on board our ship, reviewed what we'd learned so far: Every year gray whales make a 5,000-mile migration south from the frigid waters of the Bering and Chukchi Seas to the comparatively tropical waters of Baja California. The whales arrive here around January, and in these gentle, protected waters, they give birth and raise their young.

“Blow at two o'clock!” he suddenly yelled, and Lucinda the Zodiac driver shifted toward the spout of whale-spray that had materialized on the horizon.

The area we were approaching—Carlos pointed toward the now invisible blow—is known as “the nursery,” a protected stretch of water near the Boca de Soledad's narrow entrance from the ocean to the bay. This is a favorite place for whale mothers to give birth and to train their calves, Carlos said, teaching them how to swim against the strong currents at the mouth of the bay.  When they're ready, they embark on the long migration north again, in March and April.

“Rolling!” Lucinda shouted, pointing ahead. In the distance we could see a massive gray arcing shape mottled with whitish spots slowly rising out of the water and seeming to turn over on top of an even larger gray mass beneath it.   

“That's the baby rolling over the mother!” Carlos said. “They love to play like that. Whales are very tactile creatures, and touching is an important way for them to communicate and to bond.”

As we bounced closer, Lucinda slowed the Zodiac and we could clearly see two massive humps—one twice the length of our Zodiac, the other so much larger we couldn't see its head or tail—swimming side by side. The mother spouted and with gigantic grace flipped her flukes up and then dove into depths we couldn't fathom. The baby dove after her.  

We floated, scanning the blue sea surface for whale “footprints”—smooth oval stretches of water created when the whales propel themselves with their tails underwater. We searched for spouts or sleek gray humps breaking through the waves. Nothing.

“Carlos,” I asked, “when a whale flips its flukes like that—can you call it fluking?”

He cocked his bald head, smiled. “You can call it that if you want to.”

“Look out! Nine o'clock. Coming right for us!” Lucinda shouted, and rising toward the surface a huge gray-white shape sped toward our Zodiac. The baby!  

“He's coming to check us out,” Carlos said.  

“Splash! Splash!” a passenger named Thuy said, and immediately she and another passenger bent over the side of the Zodiac and began to slap the surface of the water with their hands. “We learned this morning that this might help attract the babies,” she explained.  

Suddenly a four-foot-long gray head appeared just below the surface of the water a few feet off our Zodiac. The baby whale turned and swept its eye over us, then swerved away. “Keep splashing!” Thuy encouraged us.

So I got on my knees and leaned over the Zodiac's rubbery side and began pounding the water for all I was worth.

“Momma at three o'clock!” Thuy's husband Mitch said and nine heads simultaneously swiveled. A blue-white undersea giant at least three times longer than our Zodiac serenely swam by us.

“I think she's checking us out to see if we're suitable for her baby to play with,” Carlos said.  “Send out good whale vibes.” 

Our Zodiac erupted into cries of “Come here, Baby! We love you, Baby! Momma, your baby is so beautiful!” accompanied by a chorus of splashing. 

“Here comes Baby!” Carlos said and the now familiar snout surged toward us, swimming right up to our Zodiac, lifting itself out of the water so it could touch us. I dove forward with the other passengers and stretched my arm as far as I could. Contact!  

Sleek, smooth, soft, rubbery whale-skin—cool and pliant and living and unlike anything I'd ever touched before—was flowing under my fingertips. Baby seemed to give a little smile and then pushed away.

“Woohoo!” I shouted and high-fived Mitch and the Zodiac resounded with Woohoos and All rights and Wows. Even the two teenagers among us seemed impressed. 

But Baby wasn't finished. It swam right under our Zodiac—I felt its bulbous back slide lumpily beneath my knees—then surfaced and made a run for our other side. Like cartoon characters, we all leaped to that side. And again, Baby swam right up to us, lifted its head out of the water and seemed to welcome—to initiate—our contact.

Again I leaned over as far as I could and trailed my hand in the cold whirling water and again the cool sleek touch of baby whale skin electrified me. Double whale contact!  

For the next half hour we floated in an otherworldly orb of whale-ness. Baby and Momma circled around our Zodiac, spouting, rolling, diving, swimming side by side, skimming up to us and then plunging playfully under us. A few times Baby swam up to us as if we were a rubber ducky in its bathtub and pushed us along with its snout.  

We were all whooping and laughing and calling out to Momma and Baby and for a half hour it was as if we were having an interspecies play date.

I didn't think it could get any better than that, but shortly before Momma and Baby swam away into the depths of the bay, Momma sent her own message. She had been swimming warily but serenely at a distance from the Zodiac the entire time, content to let Baby play with us, just monitoring that we all behaved.

But at this moment, she swam straight at us, a blue-white underwater mammal-bus hurtling our way. She swam right up to the Zodiac and turned gently over as she approached, so that her eye was out of the water, looking up at us. As she cruised under the bow of the Zodiac, where I was straining forward, she passed right under me. I arched and extended my arm and felt her cool, sleek cheek. I stroked it for a few seconds and in that time she looked straight into my eye and I looked straight into hers.   

And plunged into a pool of understanding and wisdom older and more far-reaching and of a different order than anything I'd encountered before. She
knew
. She knew things I could never know—about the age and evolution of the earth, about her vast underwater world. And in that instant she communicated something that I can only convey as peace and understanding, and that surged through me as an all-knowing, and somehow pardoning, blessing.

Call it projection if you want, but I know what I felt.

And it flukes in the deep blue depths of my being, even now.

As I learned four decades ago in Paris, the world is the classroom. With this mantra in mind, in the fall of 2007, I decided that the best way to understand the perplexing problems, potentials, and politics in the Balkan region would be to go there, and I arranged to join a two-week Geographic Expeditions cruise to Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. On that journey I learned much more than I could have anticipated, not only from the onboard lecturer but from completely unexpected teachers, such as chefs encountered in markets and fishermen met on wharves. The priceless value of this worldly education was demonstrated most movingly in Mostar. As our engaging twenty-something guide took us around the town and described the heartbreaking history of that exquisite city and of her own young life there, the divisiveness and destruction of war became soul-piercingly clear. But what also emerged as she showed us her home was the irrepressible hope in her eyes.

I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE, AND IT LOOKS
like a bridge. In fact, it is a bridge, the very structure I am admiring right now: the Stari Most, or Old Bridge, in the Old Town of Mostar, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which spans the Neretva River and connects the Muslim and Croat communities in this venerable and poignant place.

On hearing the word “Mostar,” most people would probably not think “budding tourist destination” but rather “bombed-out war zone.” Mostar was in headlines around the world when it was besieged during the Balkan conflict of the early 1990s. The once charming and harmonious place was first bombarded by Serbian and Montenegrin forces in April 1992; that attack subsided half a year later, only to be replaced in May 1993 by brutal, bloody fighting between the Croats and Muslims who had co-existed peacefully before. Ripped apart along ethnic and religious lines, Mostar became a haunting site and symbol of the war's destruction.

That destruction is still powerfully visible fourteen years later. Walk for fifteen minutes in the Old Town and you'll pass at least a few gaping, bomb-blasted, hulking shells of buildings and others with facades eerily pitted and pock-marked by bullet and shell holes. And you'll no doubt pass a cemetery too, as I did just now, with row after row after row of flower-graced tombstones bearing poignant photos of handsome young men, with a numbing litany of dates: 1912-1993; 1967-1993; 1967-1994; 1969-1994; 1972-1994. They give mute eloquence to the pain at the heart of this place.

But look beyond the cemetery and you'll see symbols of another kind: here a freshly painted restaurant with bright striped awnings and a red-tiled roof; there a meticulously reconstructed shop with elegant stone walls and flower-bedecked windows; and over there a cobbled terrace with immaculate wooden tables and benches arranged under new pine-green sun umbrellas.

The greatest symbol of all is the bridge. Originally constructed in the mid-16th century, for more than 400 years this ethereally slender, curving, 100-foot-long arch had been the icon of Mostar, a wonder people crossed oceans and continents to see. It had survived man's invasions and nature's earthquakes, but it couldn't survive the heavy shelling inflicted on it Nov. 9, 1993, when it collapsed into the river. So it was of singular importance that UNESCO undertook to rebuild the bridge—using the same Tenelija stone and 16th-century methods as the original—and was able to officially reopen it on July 23, 2004.

The Stari Most is important literally as a connector between the two communities of Mostar, the Croats who live on the western side of the river and the Muslims on the east; today foot traffic flows ceaselessly between the two. But its importance is even greater as a symbol of connection, of reconciliation and rebirth, of hope. And for me, it symbolizes the potential of this lovely, historic, and once all-embracing crossroads to again become a magnet for travelers from around the world, and for tourism to help heal the wounds of the war and to help cultivate a new economy and culture here.

On this September day, the sky is a deep blue, the branches of the trees that line the emerald Neretva are waving in a gentle breeze, and the sun is glinting gloriously off the white and gray stone walls and streets of the Old Town. As my tour group listens intently to our guide, six Italians smilingly settle in at a riverside restaurant, a procession of Russian tourists snap photos of domes and minarets, three UN soldiers in green-and-brown fatigues stride toward the produce market, and a phalanx of French visitors amble from alley-side stall to stall, fingering their brimming jewelry, copperwork, and other treats. Energy and optimism surge through the streets.