Twelve days on the water, 50 boats searching, and the orcas are nowhere to be found. What happens when life does not give you what you asked for or were expecting?
Somewhere around day 12, you start to wonder whether the ocean is testing you or teaching you. Maybe both.
I've been out on the water every day for nearly two weeks now. Six to eight hour days on the open ocean and inside the Sea of Cortez, searching for one animal: orca. I've never seen one in real life, not outside of SeaWorld as a kid, and I'm so grateful those animals are no longer in tanks. They belong in the ocean. So I came to the ocean to find them.
The timing felt urgent. Baja California Sur has blown up. Influencers, ads, expedition companies, all of it converging on this stretch of coastline at once. I figured if I didn't get out here soon, and for a long enough stretch, either the operations would get shut down from people harassing the animals, or there'd be so many boats that any chance of a real connection with these creatures would vanish. Turns out that fear may very well be accurate. But I came anyway, and I committed to 17 days on the water across 18 days in Mexico, doing day trips on local sustainable boats like the ones I wrote about last week.
What I didn't plan for was this: nobody is seeing orca.
Fifty Boats and Nothing
On any given day, 30 to 50 boats fan out across the Sea of Cortez, with many more around the southern tip of Cabo and into the Pacific Ocean (and that doesn't even include the spotter planes that I'm told about, which are apparently illegal but some companies are using anyway because it's become such an attraction to see orca out here). North, east, south. Captains on radios, fishermen sharing coordinates, everyone scanning the horizon. I've watched three or four groups of travelers from all over the world cycle through during my time here. People from France, China, various parts of the US and Mexico, all spending a variety of their hard-earned money, whether on day trips or multi-day expeditions, arriving with the kind of excitement that only a dream trip can produce.
I'm told there are over a hundred orca here. I don't know the exact specifics, but what the locals do seem to confirm is that there are three different pods, two of which eat mammals and travel greater distances, and one smaller group that seems to only eat fish. That's easily over a hundred of these animals in the nearby waters, and somehow, across all those boats, all those days, all those miles of ocean, they still remain invisible or pop up in the most random locations where nobody was expecting to see them.
What the Ocean Does Give You
Here's the thing. The wildlife in this part of Mexico is absolutely insane. I've swam with silky sharks, mako sharks, incredibly large oceanic manta rays, danced in the famous "fever" of Munk's mobulas (Mobula munkiana), and glided with a variety of other mobula species while I've been here. Beyond that, I've swam with huge schools of tuna, spotted dolphins giving me curious side-eyes, playful sea lions that have bumped my small action cam, and yesterday I even watched a pair of olive ridley sea turtles mating in the open ocean, something so incredibly unexpected and so beautifully magical at the same time.
This morning we even came across two humpback whales, a mom and baby, which, even though it's a little late for the season, was beautiful to be able to witness them breaching and celebrating the morning sun.
The water here is fantastic. The abundance of life, staggering. And yet, the animal everyone came for remains invisible: the ever-elusive "panda."
The Psychology of the Chase
This is where it gets interesting to me, because I've been watching not just the ocean but the people.
Everyone arrives with a fixed outcome in their mind. They've seen the Instagram shots, the influencer reels, the incredible footage of people floating next to killer whales in crystal blue water. They've invested thousands of dollars, taken time off work, traveled from the other side of the planet. The expectation isn't just high, it feels earned. I put in the time, the money, the effort. I should get the result.
But the ocean doesn't work that way. And neither does life.
I watch these travelers arrive with all that energy and excitement, and by the end of their trip, there's a quiet sadness. Not because the trip was bad. They saw incredible things. But they didn't see the one thing they came for, and somehow that colors everything.
I know this feeling intimately. Not just from this trip, but from sobriety, from career moves, from relationships. We invest deeply in a specific outcome, and when reality delivers something different, we struggle to receive it as enough.
Can You Be Happy Anyway?
This is the root question I keep coming back to, sitting on these boats watching the horizon.
Can I be happy if I don't see orca? Can I look at 17 days on the water, all the sharks, the mantas, the dolphins, the turtles, the humpback mother and calf, and genuinely say this was enough, despite not seeing the very thing I came for?
Being fair to all, it's actually a lot harder than it sounds, especially naming the large degree of investment we spoke about earlier. While it might sound extremely privileged to be in this situation, and it certainly is, anyone lucky enough to experience the ocean and to have the time, energy, and ability to travel to a destination like this is living an absolute luxury. At the end of the day, there's a cost incurred beyond just the money: energy, opportunity cost, and time itself.
In my situation, I'm still working with clients. I'm still promoting Love Unlocked, seeking out and exploring more speaking engagements, and all of that is being put on pause because I'm spending basically every moment on the ocean that I can, or sifting through footage, or writing these blogs and connecting with the clients I do have. Any and all other business advancements and connections are being given up in pursuit of this passion, this goal, this dream of mine.
But here's what recovery taught me: nothing is promised. Every day is completely different. The weather can say one thing and deliver something else entirely. You can put everything you have into something and come up empty. That's not failure. That's life on life's terms.
The ocean owes us nothing, but ultimately she gives us everything. The truth is, all of this is a gift, and any opportunity to even be on the water and in the water is a gift itself.
What Are Your Expectations?
This leads me back to you.
When you travel, what are you really chasing? What are the expectations you carry into a destination, into an experience, into a day?
And when things start to look like they might not go the way you were hoping, what happens inside you? Can you find gratitude for what's actually in front of you, even when it's not what you imagined?
Let's look at it from both perspectives. I've got five days left on the water. It's entirely possible I won't see a single orca. That would make 17 days out there searching relentlessly all day long, 18 days in Mexico, driving through the desert, staying in random locations, with nothing to show for the one thing I came here to actually see. My dream animal.
I could look at it another way: 17 days swimming in one of the most biodiverse oceans on the planet, also known as the aquarium of the sea. Encounters with animals that most people will never see in their entire lives. Early mornings on boats with good people, doing ethical work for wildlife. And what's most important, something I hold in my highest degree of gratitude for, is that I still have a body that can get in the water and do this.
That's the shift. Not lowering your standards, but widening your definition of enough.
We do this in sobriety too. We show up, do the work, put in the time, and sometimes the result isn't the one we planned for. But we're alive. We're present. We're free. And if that's not enough, we might need to look at what we're really chasing.
The orca might show up tomorrow. They might not. Either way, I was here. I tried. I made the effort, and the rest is where the true beauty of the universe comes into play.
After all, nothing is ever promised or guaranteed to us, but simply having life is our greatest gift.
You can explore more about conscious travel at Nomadic Addictt, or learn about clinical coaching and sober companionship at zacspowart.com.
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