In Colombia, You Can Watch Whales, and Serenade Them, Too

Jennie Erin Smith

Every July, tens of thousands of visitors descend on Colombia’s Pacific Coast, crowding the frenzied passenger docks in the seaport of Buenaventura as they wait for speedboats that will whisk them to the small communities lining remote Málaga Bay. They’ve come to see the humpback whales. The whales, numbering in the thousands, are on their own mass mission: migrating from their feeding grounds near Chile to their breeding grounds near Colombia, where they remain until October.

During the whale-watching season, which begins in mid-July, boats with licensed captains and guides take the visitors — mostly Colombians but a growing number of foreigners — to see the creatures breach, blow and slap the water with their fins and tails. On shore, visitors can also witness a lesser-known spectacle as residents of the area gather for an annual festival to celebrate the whales and revive a fading culture.

On a late-June night, the sun dropped and a delicious cool spread over the beach in La Barra, a village of about 400 residents on the edge of Malaga Bay. The festival, with an audience of mainly locals, was about to begin. Aside from the photographer and me, the only other attendees were members of a large contingent of volunteer physicians and veterinarians who had come to aid the town’s residents. Bandaged-up cats and dogs wandered all around.

Elders came one by one to a microphone to share stories about the whales. Amable Rivas, a fisherman and nature guide, recalled how in the days before motorboats became commonplace, humpbacks played alongside the sailing vessels that ferried passengers to and from Buenaventura. People marked the seasons by the arrival and departure of the whales. They fashioned chairs out of giant whale vertebrae that washed up on the beach.

Then, in the 1990s, Rivas said, fishermen began to notice yachts full of people who had come from elsewhere to see the humpbacks. Before that, it had not occurred to him that whales could be an attraction. “I was scared of them,” he said, thanks to stories he’d heard about a whale “having swallowed a certain Jonas,” the prophet in the biblical tale. Now, he said, he saw the whales as “a gift.” Sometimes, when he was out on the water, he would hear them singing and sing back.

Once the elders had spoken, a group of young women took turns reciting poems, including a ballad about a “fat fat fat fish.” A marimba band set up, and children performed whale-inspired folk dances boldly and expertly. Cups of viche, a sharp-edged homemade sugar cane liquor, began to make the rounds.

The Festival Mundial Ballenas y Cantaoras, a regional-government-supported event now in its seventh year, consists of two parts — this event in late June to welcome the whales, and one Sept. 20-22 to send them off. In September, the crowds would be bigger, with members of Wounaan Indigenous communities from the interior joining the Afro-Colombian residents of the beach towns, and musical acts from across the region would perform — not on the bare ground, as now, but on a stage that La Barra’s residents would soon begin building.

The festivities were already off to a good start. As the night wore on, the marimba and drumming got louder, and the viche flowed. As the residents of La Barra celebrated the whales, they were also celebrating themselves.

The area around Málaga Bay, part of a roughly 116,000-acre national marine park, is an important birthing site for humpbacks. Females and their calves seek shelter in the warm waters of the bay, away from fishing boats, shipping lanes and aggressive males.

A few years ago, a community organizer named Fabian Bueno, 42, began wondering what kind of meaning humpback whales traditionally had for the cultures who live near the bay. “Have you ever heard whale songs?” Bueno began asking people. “Did your grandparents tell you stories about whales?”

At first, Bueno said, it seemed as if there wasn’t much of a connection with the whales, and that local residents traditionally feared them. “But then we investigated a little more,” he said. An Afro-Colombian cantaora, as locals call women who are guardians of oral traditions, taught Bueno the poem about a “fat fat fat fish.” The Wounaan had a word for whale, he learned, that meant “big dolphin.” Neither culture hunted the whales, whose annual arrival was associated with abundance, both of fish and staple crops.

That’s when Bueno came up with the idea of a festival focused on whales. “We wanted to help give people a forum for their traditions, their talents, and create a sense of identity and belonging,” he said.