I don't know what I thought I would see, maybe one or two whales, but boy was I ever surprised!
Literally driving into town to the marina, I looked out across into the gulf and spotted my first whale breaching with a massive splash. I was so excited poor Shane had to try and calm me down, and keep me from jumping out of the car and racing down to the waters edge.
As soon as we got the boat out into the Gulf, we couldn't decide which way to go. In every direction I looked out on the horizon, were splashes from breaching whales and spouts of water flying up into the air as they were coming up and taking a breath.
At one stage we parked the boat about a km ahead of two whales travelling along parallel to the beach and turned off the motor. Within minutes they had caught up to us, swam past, then turned around and circled back to check us out. They were so close I could hear them breathing, which took my breath away!
Most of whales were travelling in pairs. We're not sure if it was mums with last years calves or mating pairs. But some were putting on amazing displays. They were breaching, lifting their tails high out of the water and slapping their side fins on the top of the water where it echoed across the gulf.
We felt guilty about having such a great day out without Scarlett (even thought there was no way she would have stayed out in the boat for over 6 hours), so I went and got her from school, and took her out on the water to see them for an hour or two before finally going home.
What an amazing day, we reckon we saw over 30 whales all up! I can't wait to get dad up here and take him out to see them; we really are so lucky to live up here.
Even today (Tuesday) on the way to driving Scarlett to school, we again saw them from the road, so we took a little detour down to the beach to just sit there together and watch the whales play.
