I did not have high expectations of our whale watching trip this morning. I had always assumed that there would be no whales ("such a shame, there were so many here yesterday"), or that they would be blowing and leaping just on the horizon only to disappear into the depths when you finally got there. Alexis remarked that it might be like the old Kit-Kat advert where the guy stands for hours trying to get a picture of some pandas and when he finally turns his back to eat his snack they come out on roller skates. The whales would be just behind us, doing acrobatics, killing themselves laughing...
So, it was rather nice to be proved completely wrong. We saw around 12 whales, males, females, juveniles and one very young calf. We got very close as they surfaced, saw some of them turning and rolling, and heard the massive exhalation as they 'blew'. We followed the last group, with the young calf, the mother and a male 'escort', for some time. The female was enormous, (for a whale it's not insulting to say she was really really wide) and the calf looked tiny in comparison, but was still probably several tons.
As I've mentioned before, the weather has been terrible, so it was no surprise that the rain came in halfway through the trip. But it was surprising how ferocious the downpour became. The surface of the sea (mercifully calm) was almost 'furry' with the splashes of the raindrops, like an oily silver grey blanket, the noise was astonishing, and the horizon in every direction completely disappeared. Luckily this was at the end of the trip, but we had to sit for a few moments while the crew got the gps going to figure out which way to head home.
We got drenched, but the memory of the whales more than made up for the occasional shiver as we came back to shore. A wonderful way to spend a Monday morning.
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