Cover

Katharina Heyer | Whales Calling – My life with the whales and dolphins in the Strait of Gibraltar | Written by Michèle Sauvain | WÖRTERSEH

 

All rights reserved, including those of reproduction in extracts and electronic reproduction.

© 2019 Wörterseh, Lachen

Production coordination and editor-in-chief: Andrea Leuthold
Translation: Hilary Snellgrove
Proofreading: Glynn Snellgrove
Cover photos: firmm.org (Katharina Heyer, bottlenose dolphins in the background)
Photo “About the book”: firmm.org (orca baby, Wilson)
Picture gallery photos: firmm.org
Animal chart in the picture gallery: Sebastian Kanzler
Picture gallery picture editing: Tamedia Productions Services
Cover design: Thomas Jarzina
E-Book-Conversion: Beate Simson

E-Book ISBN 978-3-03763-779-1

www.woerterseh.ch

 

Content

About the book

About the author

Foreword

Part One

Strange encounters

An interesting invitation

Rethinking

Recurring doubts

Helping hands

A bitter disappointment

Getting back on my feet

Getting things done

So many whales!

The rescue

Cheeky Orcas

An outrageous interview

Gabriela

The stranded fin whale

Shining children’s eyes

Sabotage and harassment

| Picture gallery |

Carry on!

Competitors upgrade

The dead baby whale

Part Two

Visit to Eilat

The smuggler’s bay

Hoping for Conny Land

Sushi for the Japanese

The “Great Wait”

Couscous in Tangier

Trouble with the “Uno”

The lease agreement

The breakthrough

A spectacular chase

Deadly threat

The Royal Navy intervenes

The warning

Part Three

Headwind

Magic moments

My little, big family

Vision

Epilogue

Thanks

 

About the book

Katharina Heyer had made a name for herself as a designer of fashion accessories and had built up a successful business, for which she travelled the world; she still had a good relationship with her divorced husband, two wonderful adult sons and a house on the outskirts of Zurich. Katharina Heyer had all the things you could wish for. And yet she was filled with one strong desire: to break out of the “hamster wheel” in which she was stuck. Having just turned 55, she’d had enough of having to jet around, enough of business pressure and enough of having to meet the expectations of her customers. In 1997, prompted by this feeling of claustrophobia, she decided not to spend New Year’s Eve in Switzerland, but with friends in southern Spain. It was a momentous journey, because those few days in Tarifa were enough for her find something that would give her life a completely new direction, something for which, from that moment on, she wanted to use all her energy, all her resources and all her strength: the protection of whales and dolphins in the Strait of Gibraltar. For this purpose, she gave up everything and got more than she had ever hoped for. Today, almost twenty years later, she is not only very successful in her work but is also still thoroughly happy and says: “I just followed my inner voice; and that was good, because for far too long I had paid too little attention to it.”
www.firmm.org

Orca baby Wilson
 

About the author

Michèle Sauvain
© Regula Müdespacher

MICHÈLE SAUVAIN, born 1964, received her doctorate in law and has worked for many years as a journalist, producer and documentary filmmaker for Swiss Television, where she produced films and series such as “Wir sind die Schweiz”, “Abenteuer New York”, “Chronik eines Missbrauchs”, “Alfred Escher – Superman” and “Der Fall Zwahlen”. In 2010, she also produced the film “Die Walfrau von Gibraltar”, a report about Katharina Heyer, for the television programme “Reporter”. Katharina Heyer has made it her life’s work to protect the whales and dolphins in the Strait of Gibraltar. After the film shooting was finished, Michèle Sauvain knew that there was much more to Katharina Heyer’s adventurous story. These two women never lost sight of each other, and now, years later, this has led to the publishing of this story in book form. Michèle Sauvain lives in Zurich.

 

Foreword

By chance, in autumn 2009, I came across Swiss-born Katharina Heyer and her project for the protection of marine mammals off the very tip of Spain in a German magazine. Her story fascinated me from the beginning. I hadn’t even known that there were dolphins, orcas, pilot whales, sperm whales and fin whales there, and I asked myself why people in Switzerland had never heard of this exciting woman before. So, I simply called Katharina, who was, just at that, time in Tarifa again. At sixty-seven years of age, she sounded incredibly dynamic, contented and fresh.

And this was exactly the way I experienced her when I first met her in Switzerland the following winter. Katharina is a bundle of unparalleled energy, her alert eyes shine, she is authentic and she bubbles with the joy of life. At that time, her whale watching and research station in Tarifa was already a well-established institution, enabling her to find the strength to promote her idea of setting up a retirement home in Morocco for old dolphins from delphinariums. We talked – for a long time. At some point, I asked her why she, a successful businesswoman and mother of two adult children, had ended up in Tarifa in rather late years. Her answer was as short as it was simple: “Because of the animals.” No love story? No man? “No, it’s not a love story, but it’s still a matter of the heart! You can’t imagine what it feels like to be out at sea with these animals. I just find it important to show people that they need to be protected.”

Interesting material for a “Reporter” programme, luckily the managing editor at Swiss Television was of the same opinion, and so in spring 2010 I flew to Tarifa with a cameraman. Over the five days that we accompanied Katharina, she became very dear to my heart. Her versatility impressed me. When she organised trips, instructed her crew, noted sighting results or spoke to tourists, she was clear, purposeful and highly efficient. When she stood on her beloved flydeck, high up on the “Spirit”, watching “her” animals, then her eyes shone with enthusiasm, and the way she informed the people on the boat about what she saw from up there reminded me of a child who is thoroughly happy and wants to share this happiness with the whole world.

How did this come about? She’d had everything you could wish for in Switzerland. Why had she broken out? Where did she get the courage, at an age when others would soon be retiring, to start again, building a new existence in Spain in a rural society shaped by men – alone at that? She said it was a chain of coincidences, but corrected herself immediately. “It was probably guidance and destiny, and also simply time to follow my inner voice. I’d paid too little attention to it for too long.” And when she told me how it all started, I was fascinated.

We often ask ourselves how much of what happens to us is self-determined, what is predetermined and to what extent we block our own progress. Katharina had obviously stopped asking and doubting at some point and “simply” started to live her dream. Her way of dealing with disappointments and remaining optimistic despite bitter setbacks also greatly impressed me. It quickly became clear to me that it would be impossible to fit all this into a twenty-five minute film and that Katharina’s story had the makings of a fascinating book. When I told her that, she rejected the idea.

Five years later, however, she called me and returned to my idea of writing a book about her and her adventures. And the next time she was in Switzerland, we sat down and talked again – for hours. Afterwards, it was clear that we were going to go ahead with this project, and so I was given the opportunity to immerse myself intensively in her world once again.

Being allowed to pack this world into a book is a gift, because it is about more than Katharina’s story and her great commitment to the whales in the Strait of Gibraltar – and the dolphins as well. It’s about where it can lead you, if you trust your inner voice and let things happen with a certain serenity. It’s about the meaning of life. Katharina brought the question of meaning to Tarifa, and there she found her purpose in life. This enabled things to come about that were meant to be.

Michèle Sauvain, August 2016

 

Part One

 

Strange encounters

The sky was grey and it was raining heavily as Rita and I drove our car through the beautiful nature reserve at the most southern tip of Spain. From the green hills, I looked down to the Strait of Gibraltar for the first time. Speechless, I sat next to Rita in the car thinking: what a wonderful place. The coastal town of Tarifa, with its small off-shore island, lay directly below us, and, on the opposite shore, the hills of Morocco were visible behind the curtain of rain. How beautiful it must be here when the sun was shining.

It was the 28th of December 1997. I had fled here, to Rita and her husband Peter, for a few days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, hoping to get some rest. At that time, I was still jetting around the globe non-stop in my role as business woman and successful designer of handbags. Six months earlier, Rita and Peter had left their old life in Switzerland behind them and bought a piece of land in the village of Gaucín, a few kilometres from Tarifa, in the middle of a large orange plantation. There they wanted to make their long-standing dream come true: to build a finca and open a Bed & Breakfast. Until such times, they were living in a cottage nearby. I admired their courage, but I missed Rita very much in my everyday life. I was so used to sharing my sorrows and worries with her. When she was still living in Switzerland, we often used to meet spontaneously for tea.

I was fifty-five years old at the time and had no idea how my life should go on. All I knew was that I didn’t want to carry on as things were. Although I led an exciting life, it was no longer emotionally satisfying. I wanted to make a difference socially – but what?

It was Ara, my friend and life consultant, who’d encouraged me to drive down and spend the holidays with Rita and Peter. He’d mentioned in passing that I could use this opportunity to have a look at Tarifa. “There are supposed to be dolphins and even orcas there,” he’d said. Ara knew I loved diving. I’d already seen some dolphins on my dives, they’d always fascinated me: to look a dolphin in the eye is something very special, something magical, and the impression that these creatures must be extremely sensitive and intelligent is immediate. But I’d never met an orca before and would have given a lot for that experience. However, now was Christmas and not the ideal time for diving in the Mediterranean. So why had Ara mentioned it? It wasn’t the first time he’d pointed something out to me that I’d only been able to understand much later. Although we had only known each other for five years, he could “read” me well. Maybe it would really do me good to go to Spain and do nothing for once. It was also warmer there than in Zurich. I didn’t like the city during the Christmas period, it depressed me. That’s also why I had decided to flee to Rita. With a little luck, I might actually see my first orca.

But now this rain … Rita and I were already discussing turning round and coming back when the weather was better, when a bright cloud suddenly formed in the cloudy dark-grey sky directly above the small island. I couldn’t believe my eyes. We looked at each other.

“Rita, do you see what I see?” I asked her in disbelief.

She nodded silently, but I insisted: “What exactly do you see?”

“A big jumping dolphin.”

The cloud really was the shape of a big jumping dolphin! I couldn’t believe it and got terribly excited. Ara’s remarks, the cloud … That wasn’t like me at all: I, the realist, standing firmly with both feet on the ground at all times, was looking at a dolphin cloud that seemed to be showing me the way, like something out of a fairy tale. There was no turning back. We drove down the narrow road to the harbour and parked the car on a large parking lot in front of an avenue of palms. The Tourist Office had to be here somewhere. We turned into a small street, and, after a few metres, we stood in front of the entrance. I wanted to go out to sea, to see if there really were dolphins and orcas here. I had to get to the bottom of this. The Tourist Office was certainly the place to find out if and how we could get out into the Strait of Gibraltar at this time of year.

When I entered the room, my eyes immediately fell on a spotty, wrinkled ad on the info board on the wall. It showed the picture of a jumping dolphin and the inscription “Wanted, dead or alive”. I couldn’t figure the ad out. Who was looking for dead dolphins? At the bottom of the page, there was a Madrid telephone number, hardly legible. I asked the young woman at the desk if, by any chance, there was a fishing boat that would take us out to sea. She looked at me completely baffled and raised her eyebrows.

“No fisherman takes tourists out to sea.” When she saw my disappointed face, she got a little friendlier: “What do you want to do out there?”

“See dolphins,” I said.

The woman laughed, and I felt rather stupid. “Dolphins? I don’t know whether there are any here at all,” she replied, “but he thinks there are too.” She pointed to the info board at the entrance.

On an inexplicable impulse, I pulled out my mobile phone and dialled the number that was on the ad. A growling male voice answered, a bit grumpily, in Spanish – all I understood was “Diego”.

I answered in English: “Hello Diego, this is Katharina. I’ve seen your ad and I want to ask you if you know where my friend and I can see dolphins here?”

Diego’s voice became friendlier and more business-like immediately. “Oh, hello, Katharina. Yes, I know where you can do that, and I could offer you places on my boat next weekend.”

“But we’d like to go out to sea right now. Maybe you know a fisherman who would still have time today,” I urged, because I didn’t want to wait until the weekend.

The phone went silent, then Diego asked: “Why is it so important for you to leave right now? What do you have to do with dolphins?”

“Actually nothing … they just always fascinated me somehow … and … er … maybe I’ll do something with dolphins …” I listened to myself and thought that this “Maybe I’ll do something with dolphins” had to sound pretty naive and stupid.

Diego just said: “In this weather, no fisherman will go out with you. Come to Tarifa first, then we’ll look into the matter.”

“We’re already in Tarifa! We’re at the Tourist Office.”

He laughed. “Right, then just go outside and fifty metres down the palm alley you’ll find the Café Continental. Wait for me there. I have a moustache, I’ll be wearing a hat and I’ll come with a big dog. His name is Zacharias.” Then he hung up.

Soon after, Rita and I sat in the café, waiting. “Why are you so desperate to get out today?” she asked me.

I looked at her thoughtfully. “You know me, I just want to know if there are any marine mammals here.”

Rita smiled. She knew me and knew that if I’d got something in my head, she wouldn’t be able to stop me. When Diego walked in the door half an hour later, I recognised him immediately. His appearance didn’t awaken much trust. He wore a dirty T-shirt and dirty jeans, his moustache grew in all directions, and a five-day beard spread across his cheeks and chin. He’d pulled his hat far down over his face so that his eyes were barely visible. As he approached, I noticed his yellow teeth and dirty nails – and the smell of his dog. A very large, undefinable street dog mix, Zacharias stank to high heaven. He was even more unkempt than his master. Normally, I would’ve backed out immediately. But today wasn’t “normal.” I stayed.

Since it was still raining, Rita and I had enough time to listen to Diego’s story. I guessed him to be about forty and, despite his not very attractive appearance, I was somehow fascinated by him. Rita less so, she kept looking at him sceptically from the side. He actually came from Patagonia, he told us, and had lived in Argentina with his Spanish wife and children until four years ago. After the divorce, she’d returned to Madrid with the children. And to be closer to them, he’d also moved there. But now, he’d come here because he wanted to set up a whale watching station in Tarifa. As an orca researcher, he was convinced that there were marine mammals here. Whale watching is very popular in America, but not yet widespread in Europe. I found his remarks interesting, and we had a very lively conversation. He told us about the Argentine peninsula of Valdés, known for its biodiversity, where there are sea lions and sea elephants, dolphins and other whales. And he told us about “intentional beaching”, a hunting technique practised by orcas, which involves very intelligently driving the seals that live around this peninsula towards the beach so that they can intercept them in the surf.

“I think I can learn a lot from you,” I said after an hour.

“Why don’t we start right now?” he countered boldly. “Why don’t you come home with me and I’ll tell you more?”

Rita and I glanced at each other. She’d already resigned herself to the fact that I would not let go and nodded to me with a grin. I was glad she was coming with me.

A few streets further, Diego led us into a narrow side street and through a small entrance to the upper floor of one of those typical, white-tiled, two-storey Moorish houses in the old town. His tiny apartment, the width of a hand towel, was indescribably dirty and messy, and it stank dreadfully of dog. The only furnishings were a table overloaded with mountains of paper, three chairs and a two-storey bunk bed. Apparently, the dog slept on the bottom bunk, Diego on the top. It was damp, cold and musty in the room. But when Diego fished out newspaper clippings with dolphin photos from the mountains of paper, I forgot where we were altogether, and we talked until deep into the night. Rita – dear friend – joined in, even though she couldn’t share my euphoria. Diego pulled out an article from a local newspaper. He said that he’d once rescued a dolphin near Tarifa. He also went on to talk about various encounters with dolphins and turtles in the Strait of Gibraltar and how impressive they were.

“I met Lourdes, my ex-girlfriend, in Tarifa. We share a great passion for these animals. We’ve already found whale teeth here on the beach,” he continued, “so there must also be whales in the Strait of Gibraltar! And that, right here, where more than two hundred large freighters pass through every day! Looked at in terms of road conditions, that’s like traffic on a heavily used highway during rush hour!” Diego got all excited. “And that’s why I want to set up a whale watching centre here. I want to show people the dolphins and all the other whales and make them aware of how dangerously the animals here live.”

I wondered how these sensitive marine mammals could cope with the traffic. There must be a high level of underwater noise in between all those freighters. And it must be extremely dangerous for the dolphins, but above all for the big, ponderous whales, which have difficulty getting out of the way. If what Diego said was really true, then obviously nobody believed there were dolphins and other whales here, not even the woman in the Tourist Office. On the way back, I was silent. What I’d heard was bothering me. And when I finally got to bed, I tossed and turned sleepless for a long time. I just had to find out the truth of the matter.

Rita was worried when I announced the next morning that I wanted to go to Tarifa alone. Diego had promised to organise a boat and take me out to sea. He didn’t even own one, as he’d confessed to us late the night before. Rita, who didn’t really trust Diego anyway, was sure he wouldn’t turn up. She already saw me sitting alone in the café, and at first it actually seemed as if she was going to prove right. For over an hour, I sat there and waited, then I tried to phone him. In vain. He didn’t answer the phone. It was still raining, and I absolutely froze. There was no heating in the café. After an eternity, he finally picked up the phone, but he sounded so hungover that I asked him if he was capable of doing anything at all.

“Of course, I’ll be right there,” he said.

In the end, he did actually come, his hat pulled down even further over his eyes than the day before. Probably to stop me seeing his blotchy face, but the alcohol on his breath betrayed everything. Of course he hadn’t got hold of a boat, and when we finally left, we couldn’t find one. Instead, Diego dragged me through the streets of Tarifa in the pouring rain to show me houses for sale.

“We could get something off the ground together,” he said. “We could make it known that there are dolphins and other whales here, and save a lot of animals’ lives.”

I looked at him in astonishment. What did he think?! That I would buy him a house for his whale watching centre?

“Diego, things don’t work like that, I hardly know you,” I said, slightly annoyed.

But I’d already taken the bait anyway. Without further ado, I asked Diego to get into the car, and we drove to Gaucín, to Rita and Peter. It was warm and cosy at their place because, typical of Swiss people abroad, the first thing they had done was to buy a small, mobile heater. And so the four of us sat at the table in the big kitchen, while outside the Levante, a stormy east wind, whistled. We continued our discussion of the previous day. The dolphins and other whales that Diego said lived between tankers and propellers were only one problem in his eyes. He told us that Spain had the most dolphinariums in Europe. I knew that the animals didn’t enjoy life in captivity, but I’d never thought more about it.

“Imagine how that is for them, they orient themselves and communicate with echo waves in their natural habitat, constantly sending out orientation clicks and impulses. This enables them to recognise the shape, density and location of objects. But what happens when they’re confined in a pool?” Diego asked. And gave the answer himself: “Their echo waves reverberate from the dense concrete walls, bounce back again and hit these highly sensitive animals, so that they lose their orientation. What do they do then? Exactly, they stop clicking at some point, and that sends their whole system into confusion.”

That made sense to me. If these “clickless” animals were released back into the wild, they would be eaten by sharks or starve, being no longer able to locate their food, communicate or orient themselves. On diving trips, I’d always been fascinated by the infinity and the vastness under water, it was like sinking into another world – no comparison to the size of a pool, where the animals are kept in too small a space and have no possibility to retreat. I realised that dolphinariums are pure animal cruelty.

Evening had drawn in, and we were still talking. Suddenly, the phone rang. Peter picked it up.

“Hello Ara, how are you? Yes, Katharina’s here, nice that you could convince her to visit us.” Then Peter listened and frowned. “Yeah, Diego’s here too. Wait a minute, I’ll pass you over to Katharina.”

Surprised, I reached for the receiver – how come Ara knew Diego?

“Hello Katharina, I forgot to give you Diego’s phone number, but you’ve obviously already met. I’ve never met him personally, what’s he like?”

“Ara,” I said in complete confusion, “how come you know Diego?” I didn’t get an answer to that question either then, or later. I kept talking: “What’s he like? That’s difficult to answer. I’m sitting at the table with him right now! I called him after finding an ad. He promised to take us out to the whales in his boat, but he doesn’t own a boat at all. Apart from that, he’s broke and he lives in a dirty hole. He says he’s a whale researcher, and he tells interesting stories about dolphins and other whales that apparently really live here.” I was glad Diego didn’t understand German.

“Katharina, find out what kind of man this Diego is.”

What on earth did Ara mean by that? Did he want to warn me? But what confused me even more was this funny coincidence. Because of a strange dolphin cloud, we’d gone to the Tourist Office and found Diego’s ad. He’d then told us that there were dolphins and other whales here. And now, Ara was pointing me in Diego’s direction, although he didn’t know him at all. Once again, Ara was speaking in riddles, and as so often there was no getting any more out of him.

“I don’t know what all this means either, Katharina,” he said, “you have to find the answer yourself.”

Since there was no point in insisting, I changed the subject and told him, outraged, about the dolphinariums in Spain and that three more were going to be added to the six that already existed.

His answer was short: “So don’t wait too long.” Confused, I hung up the phone and drove Diego back to Tarifa.

He called me the next morning, in a state of great excitement: “Katharina, you bring me luck. The mayor has contacted me and wants to see me today. Maybe he’ll support us. You have to be there, too.”

“That’d be great,” I replied.

The mayor had announced his arrival for the evening. I went to Tarifa and gave Diego some money so that he could buy cleaning stuff, and coal for his oven. When I came back, his flat was warm, clean and tidy. But the mayor didn’t show up. That evening, Diego’s phone rang instead. A group of twenty-two people from Marbella wanted to enquire about the possibility of whale watching. How lucky we were! For just Rita, Peter, Diego and me, a trip out to sea would have been much too expensive. But with twenty-six people, chartering a boat was no problem. The only thing we needed now was better weather.

Three days later, on Saturday morning, the sky finally cleared a little. We all met at the Tarifa harbour. This picturesque, Moorish coastal town at the southernmost end of the European continent has been the Mecca for surf freaks since the eighties. The former smuggler village was regarded as an insider tip and offered everything a cool surfer needs: lots of good wind, trendy bars as well as drugs smuggled in directly from Morocco – as much as anyone could want. From April to September, the windsurfing scene from all over the world met here where the Mediterranean and the Atlantic meet. Now, around Christmas, the place was completely deserted.

The first dark clouds were looming again when Diego finally managed to rent a boat along with a captain from a diving school. “Diving school” was a bit of an exaggeration. Actually, the school consisted of Ana and Miguel, two diving freaks from Sevilla, who were here over the weekend and offered dives. They used a container for an office, which they had simply placed in the harbour and in which they could also store their diving equipment. Miguel drove us with his “Scorpora” out into the Strait of Gibraltar. At last!

Half an hour later, the sky was already dark with clouds again, the sea almost black. Only in the east, looking towards the Mediterranean, was there a golden strip of light stretching across the horizon. We were in the middle of the Strait. Further away, on the Moroccan side, freighters and container ships passed by. A group of pilot whales, which I always found very cute because of their snub noses, immediately swam towards our boat. Unbelievable, there really were whales here! I realised immediately that Diego had no idea about the animals; he didn’t even know that they were pilot whales. Actually, this should have made me suspicious, but I was so fascinated that I had no time for mistrust. Apart from that, I was simply grateful to him because he had just given me proof that there really were marine mammals here.

Shortly afterwards, striped dolphins appeared. They jumped around in front of our boat until a big freighter came along, which they obviously found more interesting. They swam towards it, and we watched them jumping in front of the bow. It looked amicable and like a game. But I hadn’t yet seen all the many animals whose bodies had been slit open by ship’s propellers.

On the way back, our guests from Marbella were already in party mood. But the four of us didn’t feel like joining in with the noise, and we withdrew to the stern of the boat. We were standing at the railing looking over to the golden strip in the east, when suddenly a huge dolphin shot high into the air. It turned on its own axis and dived down again, while, almost immediately, two more dolphins rose out of the water and jumped towards each other in a high arc. Again, Rita and I looked at each other in disbelief. The dolphins had formed a heart with their bodies! That was deeply touching, and a picture none of us will ever forget. It may sound a bit sentimental or even presumptuous but, at that moment, I felt a deep connection with these animals, and I wondered whether making their existence in the Strait of Gibraltar known and protecting them was perhaps the new task I’d been looking for for so long.

 

An interesting invitation

With my thoughts still in turmoil, I flew back to Switzerland the next day. I didn’t know what would come out of what I had just experienced; I only knew that I wished with all my heart that something would come out of it. When the plane landed in Kloten, the idea of slipping back into my old life almost tied my stomach in knots. I probably wouldn’t be able to avoid taking a closer look at both my professional and my private situation. Of course, I’d known this for quite some time, because Ara had also given me to understand, in his cryptic way, that I would have to let go in order to create something new. But what that meant, I wasn’t really sure. What was I supposed to let go of? I did my job happily and was proud of the fact that I was leading a self-determined life as a successful businesswoman. But was it really self-determined? Suddenly my life seemed like a pair of old sneakers to me: For a long time you think these are your favourite shoes, but suddenly you look down at yourself and notice that they are completely worn out and no longer suit you at all.

I lived in a spacious, light, seventies-style, detached house. It was situated at the foot of the Üetliberg, Zurich’s local mountain, right on the edge of the forest in the small community of Stallikon – in the middle of nature and yet close to the city. When my two boys were still young, there had been a sandpit in the garden where they’d dug lakes and built castles. They’d often played down at the little stream in the gully behind the house. Everything had been just right for me back then. But now it was quiet. The boys had left to live their own lives long ago. Sam, my older son, was thirty-one and had been stationed in Hong Kong since the summer, setting up private banking for UBS. Andy, the younger one, was twenty-nine and newly wed. He and his wife Gaby were expecting their first baby and lived one street away. Andy was working as a Skyguide air traffic controller at Zurich Airport. When I came home from my journeys, I always felt a little lonely. Did I really want to keep jetting around the world with interim stops every now and then in this empty house where the children’s laughter belonged to the past? Did I really want to grow old here?

I’d been divorced twice and was working together with my first ex-husband, Peter, the father of my children, in the travel industry. We developed new bag designs, had them made in Asia and sold them all over the world. Initially, when Peter started his own business twenty-five years ago, I’d done it more for fun than anything else, but it then soon became obvious that I had an eye for good design. Our company, Sono, grew fast and the big Swiss fashion houses showed interest. We’d discovered a niche in the market.

Although Peter and I had separated privately, we continued running the company together. We got along very well as business partners. For years, we supplied Migros, Coop, Globus, Jelmoli and many other shops. It was great fun for me seeing my creations being so well received, and this provided a wonderful balance to being a mother. Seven years ago, Puma International joined the company. They asked me, if I could take over the designing of their sports bags as well. Shortly afterwards, the third largest American importer of travel goods also signed me up. Both were welcome challenges, but it meant a lot more work. My axis since then had been the Far East, Europe, and the USA; I sometimes travelled around the world eight times a year, taking part in fifteen different trade fairs every year for six months. Of course, my mobile phone was always on twenty-four hours a day, also because of the time difference between here and the USA or the Far East.

On long flights, high up in the air and far away from everything, the desire to do something different – perhaps more meaningful – at some point in this life, had grown in the last five years. I had no idea how to get out of this very successful but hectic windmill of activity. But the desire to unburden myself and become freer again was there. When, with this in mind, I suggested to Peter, in 1994, that we sell Sono, he was initially very sceptical. He doubted we’d be able to find an interested party that easily. We’d always had very different outlooks when it came to such things. He was much more hesitant than I was. When I wanted something, I usually found a way. But he was right: We were sitting on a stock of bags with a total value of approximately one million Swiss francs.

But, when I told the industry about my intentions, a Swiss businessman who lived in Hong Kong came forward surprisingly quickly. Beat was from Basel and did the same thing in Hong Kong as we did based in Zurich, but, in addition to bags, he also made wallets and suitcases and sold them all over the world. His calculation was simple: If he took over our company, he would have one less competitor and could also take on our customers. He wanted to make Sono, with its location in Zurich, into an international meeting place for European buyers from the industry. His one condition, however, was that I design the collections for another three years. Pretty smart of him, because that meant he kept all the customers who liked my designs on board.

His financial offer was good. Since Peter wanted to remain in the company but I wanted to leave, we agreed that the two of them would pay me off, but that I would continue to manage the collections for the time being. That worked well. My bags were coveted, I could have carried on, no problem. But did I want to? When I returned from Tarifa, two of the agreed three years were already over. Although I no longer worked at the operational level, I still had far too much to do. And even though it was still fun creating new designs, the business wasn’t particularly exciting any more – I’d known it too long and too well for that.

However, there wasn’t much time to think about it. The hamster wheel began to turn again. In all haste, I prepared for the next Far East trip. I flew my usual tour: South Korea – Taiwan – Hong Kong. At each location, I worked for three or four days in the showrooms, where our new bag models were being presented; I negotiated with prospective buyers and looked at what the competition was bringing onto the market. Besides this, I had to discuss the details for the current production with those responsible in the factories. I met countless people and was exceedingly busy with the new collections, so January passed quickly. Only on the long flights did I think back to Tarifa and the dolphins now and then. I thought about various scenes, with Diego, with Rita and Peter, with the animals at sea. But it all seemed distant and almost unreal to me now.

At the end of January, shortly before my departure from Taipei to Hong Kong, I read in a newspaper that the International Congress of Marine Biologists would take place in Monaco at the beginning of March. I only marginally absorbed this information, but when I got to our office in Hong Kong, there was a fax from Diego on my desk. He wrote that he’d been invited to an event for orca researchers to be held during the annual Marine Biologists Congress in Monaco, but had no money to go there. I remember sitting in my chair with the fax in my hand, wondering what to do. A dubious orca researcher – or perhaps just a would-be scientist – who I barely knew, was asking me to pay his flight so that he could fly to a congress on a subject that I had no idea about. But then this picture of jumping dolphins appeared in front of me again. Contrary to my otherwise so rational nature, I sent him the money and decided to go to the congress myself, to take a closer look at the matter. In my diary, I actually found a free time-window for a long weekend in Monaco.

When I left, at the beginning of March, there was still snow on the north side of the Gotthard. The car journey was laborious, because there was a lot of traffic. Things were better after the border and my heart lifted. Equipped with a sandwich and a bottle of water, I drove non-stop from then on and arrived, tired, late at night in Monaco. Diego was waiting for me at the congress centre, as arranged. He still wasn’t a feast for the eye, and his moustache seemed even less groomed than in Tarifa, but at least he didn’t have Zacharias with him. It was freezing cold and uncomfortable as we walked through the deserted streets looking for something to eat. In front of a pizzeria, we saw two people, wrapped in coats, scarfs and caps, eating a pizza. Diego knew them.

“Hello Anjan,” he shouted, “hello Claudia, this is Katharina. She just arrived from Switzerland!”

Claudia grinned: “Then we can talk Basel German.”

Anjan and Claudia were a couple studying marine biology at the University of Basel. Diego, who had arrived one day before me, had already got to know them. We only exchanged a few words because it was much too cold for me to be sitting outside. In the pizzeria, Diego then told me that his ex-girlfriend, Lourdes, had come to Tarifa especially to look after Zacharias.

“You know, Lourdes is not an easy woman. We’ve separated several times, I just can’t get away from her and she can’t get away from me either. If we had a joint project, maybe we’d get back together again. So far, Zacharias is our only joint project.” Apparently, the relationship was complicated.

He was obviously still dreaming that I would finance his whale watching idea as a kind of patron, but I made it quite clear that, for me, that was out of the question. Nevertheless, I wanted to see what was going on, here in Monaco. Therefore, the next day, full of curiosity, I walked through the trade fair with Diego and eagerly gathered all the available information. The fact that obviously no one here knew Diego, the orca researcher, wasn’t something I bothered thinking about. I studied the posters on which the scientists presented their latest research results. For each poster there were so-called abstracts, small summaries that were available at the entrance in catalogue form, and with which it was easy to orientate yourself in the large exhibition hall. On this first day, as we were wandering around between the posters, already quite tired from the many impression, Anjan suddenly stood in front of us and said: “I’ve seen and heard enough for today, are you coming for coffee?”

had

The next morning, I gave Diego instructions to look around in Tarifa for a place we could work from. We needed a base and an address. After all, people had to be able to find us if they looked for us. The fact that we had met Claudia and Anjan in Monaco was an incredible stroke of luck. The whole world of marine biologists was there, but it was those two, who we met by chance late at night in front of the pizzeria, who were studying in Basel with David Senn, a luminary of the international marine research scene. I still had no idea how valuable this contact was going to be for us.