Whale watching - 2nd chance

Feb 11: We are back on the boat for our 2nd chance to catch a whale!  Well, not literally catch a whale but at least catch a glimpse of one :-)  We did not see any on our first whale watching trip a few weeks ago and thankfully we were given a rain-check, so this trip is free. Even better!

Our friends from the UK are here visiting so they are tagging along as well.  Graham and Charlie especially love having them around!

I forgot to take my Dramamine this time but thankfully the waves were down today.  But I need to get something into my belly. I know it sounds weird, I actually feel nauseous on an empty stomach.  Hot dogs for lunch:

We spot another cruise liner.  Gosh, these things are really massive:

Graham and Charlie would love that slide!

We are now in the open ocean.  Graham is bored...

And Charlie is having a snuggle-buggle and falling asleep with Ara!

But wait... there are some splashes...

Dolphins!!!  Like SO MANY of them!!!

I am probably exaggerating but I'm quite sure there were about a hundred dolphins!

There were lots of baby dolphins are well:

After a good 10-15 minutes with the pod, we move on.  I catch a dolphin catching the waves at the back of the boat.  Too cool!

Okay, back to finding that whale!  It's probably another 30 minutes or so when the boat starts to slow down.  See that break in the water in the photo below?  Well, that's sort of like the whale's footprint.  A whale's tail is called a fluke so it's called a "fluke print" :-)

We have to wait for a few minutes before the whale resurfaces.  There's the spray from the blowhole!

There are actually 2 whales today.  Woohoo!!!

Now here is an interesting fact - the whale is actually not spraying water out of their blowholes.  When the whale resurfaces and exhales, they release the air forcefully through the blowhole.  Since the air inside the whale is typically warmer than the cooler temperature outside, it immediately condenses making it look like a water spout.  Who knew!  And supposedly you can tell the different whale species based on the shape of this water spout.  We'll see how long we have to live here to get to that stage of expertise :-P

No breaching today by the whales which is too bad.  But one last look at the whale's fluke!

What a fun day and experience for everyone!  I think those dolphins definitely stole the show today!!! I should have panned out more so you can actually get a good feel of exactly how many dolphins there were.  Next time :-)