Day Three - WHALES!

This morning, we got up around 7:30 and headed to the Big Island Breakfast at the Waters Edge Ballroom again.

The most important even today was obviously our Whale Watching Tour. Here's a little background on humpback whales in Hawaii. 

Andrew and I were due at the Marina at 10:50 am, so he and I called for the car and left the hotel around 10. It took about 40 minutes to get to the Marina, is between the airport and the Kailua-Kona area. We were told to watch for the van with the 12-foot whale model on top - so you can imagine we had no problem finding our tour!

After checking in, we boarded our tour boat. We booked with Capt. Dan McSweeney's Whale Adventures which came highly recommended from just about every source we had, and with VERY good cause. Our tour was narrated by Capt. Dan himself who has a wealth of knowledge and decades of experience with whale research. To start the trip, both Capt. Dan and the other two crew members gave background information and told us "what we were seeing" which was great to folks like us who'd never seen whales.

After about 20 or 30 minutes, we came to an area where the earlier trip had seen whales, and waited to see if they were still there. All the passengers were told to keep an eye out and to scan the water for spouts, and eventually someone on the starboard side saw one. After being reminded to not all shift to that side of the boat lest we tip (!), Capt. Dan said he thought there were about 8 whales in our immediate area. For the next hour, those whales treated us to more spouting, a lot of tail slapping, round outs, spy hopping and breaching.

This was truly one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I was amazed at how close these wonderful creatures came to our boat, how playful they were and how it seemed as though the whales not only wanted us to see them - they wanted us to learn from them and to share in their journey. The tour we took with Capt. Dan's company was perfect and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants a great experience like ours! I am so glad I had this experience and I would repeat it any time!