Whale Watching, take two!

Whale Watching

Last year we went whale watching but it was a bit late in the season and we didn't see any whales. Every morning for the last two years I've stared out my back doors while drinking my coffee stalking the ocean for signs of whales. Nada. Our time on this island is coming to a close and I did not intend to leave here without seeing some whales. So we found out when peak whale watching season here is and scheduled another trip. We have a few pods of sperm whales that live around our island year round, however the peak season is from mid April through first part of June when several of the migratory species pass through the Azores.

This trip did not dissapoint! We were on the boat for a while when I saw one of the tour operators go into the wheel house to get his camera. A sure sign something was about to make an appearance, I grabbed my camera and headed to the front of the boat as well. Soon enough we had a pair of giant humpback whales right in front of us. It was truly amazing! You cannot imagine how gigantic they are! They look so large when they pop up out of the water, but when you look at the reference card and see where their dorsal fins are and realize that the only part of the whale you are actually seeing is a tiny section near the rear of the whale, it's astounding. We watched the humpback pair for some time and they didn't mind us trailing them at all. Then we switched places with a smaller boat that had gone out with our group and learned they had been watching a pair of blue whales! Blue whales are the largest living creature on Earth! If you're going to see a whale, this is the mac daddy of whales!! The tour guide told us that their hearts are the size of a small car and their veins are so large a grown man could stand up inside of one! I can imagine a man standing inside a vein but I can't make sense of the whole picture and trying to grasp just how absolutely enormous that must be. Here are some more very interesting facts about the blue whale. The tour operators were quite impressed with the show we got as well. They said usually the species stay farther apart from each other, but these pairs of whales wound up swimming altogether in the same area, so that had they all come up for air at the same time you'd have four whales of two different species all in the same photo! The guide said he'd never seen this before in his life! Pretty special! I got some amazing pictures and I can cross whale watching off my bucket list.