This February we spent twelve days on a rather small boat, hunting whales (for photographs) along the Baja peninsula, down the Pacific and up into the Sea of Cortez.

My daughter, who is a small woman to start with managed to lose 4kg or just over half a stone in weight not because the sea was rough (aside from a couple of days) but because the cook was rubbish and there was nothing for someone with a dodgy stomach to eat.

When you’re seasick the last thing you want is to be faced with a plate of something not-quite-curry-notquite-sweet&sour.

But we certainly found whales.

And dolphins of many types, even a porpoise though since that was being hunted to death by a (rare) type of killer whale, maybe that was less than lucky.

The reason for choosing this trip in particular was the access to lagoons along the coast.

The lagoons alongside the Pacific are where grey whales calve, and unable to do anything but feed their calves for months on end in a desperate bid to get them strong enough for the journey back to the Arctic, the whales get very bored and curious.

So when people descend (only one boat is allowed in the lagoon at a time) in little skiffs, the whales approach and interact.

Petting a wild grey whale that has come to be scratched and scritched by you and your fellows sharing a tiny little boat much smaller than the baby whale never mind its mother lifting it up to see you, has to be one of the most amazing experiences.

Two full days of whale petting later, and we set off south to find humpbacks dancing and singing in the waves off the tip of the peninsula along the way meeting up with bryde, fin and blue whales. The female humpbacks swim south to breed, but are quite likely to decide once there that they don’t fancy it and turn around to swim back. A dominant male will accompany her on the journey in hope of breeding whilst others approach and attempts to jostle him away from her side.

From the boat, this all looks incredibly serene: a family group happily travelling in tandem. From above the slicing and dicing of swimming males trying to cut each other up in the water, blowing bubbles to warn of territory and threat is more apparent.

It was both the best and worst of trips.

Best news of all: I will never feel a need to go whale watching on a boat again.

Worst news of all: Photographing in the wild is hideously expensive, and incredibly addictive. Tigers in India are next.