Whale Watching

Sunday, October 17  South Africa

We scheduled a whale watching tour.  We tried to schedule for one for Mossel Bay, but they said the whales were gone... so, we called Plettenburg Bay area and they said yes, they still had whales!  We were hoping they were really there...

We don't know which is worse... orange life vests or orange dew rags!

We did our first group tour today and we hate group tours, but we managed just fine.  We were the first on the boat getting the front row... and we were also the first off the boat.

We drove out several miles and finally we saw 2 Mother Whales with their calves.

First set wasn't too friendly or show us much, so I was excited when we found the second one.  She gave us the opportunity to take more pics, but neither of them were jumping :-(   I guess they were busy protecting their babies.

Baby Blowing Water 

Mom Blowing Water

Mom's eyes & nose heading towards us
Note the barnacles all over her.

You can see the mouth

Mom's Tail

Mom's eye

Mom on her side

So now, if you put all the pictures together as a puzzle you almost get a complete whale!  Wish we could have seen some jumping or such, but not our luck that day.  We were just glad we found whales!

We got a bonus and happened to see a seal swimming, but only for a second and then he was gone.

Our captain spotted some penguins, but I never saw them.

We were first to unload!

Bringing the boat back to shore was a hoot.  They don't have boat docks in the area we went out for the whale watching.  So coming back in, they started from pretty far out in the water and just gunned it full speed and rammed the boat maybe 40 feet onto the sandy shore.  You just have to hang on for that sudden stop!  They then brought steps for us all to unload.

Then by tractor they somehow get a trailer under it, turn it around and then when ready to go back out for next trip... they load everyone from the back and then they push the trailer & boat with tractor into the water.  Benny, you should try that with your boat... the part about just ramming it on shore!

I noticed that all the boats along there were sitting on the sand or up on trailer ready to go out.  I think the one tractor just pushes whoever needs out, whether it's the whale watching, fishing expedition boats or whoever.

As we were leaving the beach area I saw these three little boys sitting behind this building eating ice cream.

One has his shirt on his head trying to keep cool.

This Gull was sitting on top of the same building