WARNING: This post contains A LOT of photos of whales, but none of Wales.
The main event today was a whale watching trip. We’d been moved to an afternoon boat, from the morning, then delayed around an hour. Some sloppy excuse about a broken engine.
Of course, before all of that we headed out for breakfast, this time a well rated diner. The food was good for some, less good for others. Then a gentle meander back into some of the shops we’d not had time for the day before – a thrift shop for Mila (whatever that is), a wooden jigsaw shop for Jo, a bookshop for Jo…..you get the idea….my phone battery almost died.
Then back to the hotel to collect optical devices (cameras, binoculars, sunglasses, etc….) before heading to Fisherman’s Wharf where the trip would begin – itself a picturesque floating village with large numbers of idiot tourists taking photos of themselves in Insta-poses (one leg cocked like a weeing dog, looking back over the shoulder, that kind of nonsense), most of them getting in my way.
Once suited up (a lot less impressive than the bear watching trip) we headed to the boat, pushed to the front (again) and headed out to sea. The (Salish) sea is actually the border between Canada and the US and a shipping lane. Our guides (Liam and Izzy) were very good explaining all about the animals we would be seeing, but didn’t promise anything, and the skipper Russ piloted the boat at mostly quite high speed. Izzy was from Wales and unfortunately when getting on the boat Jo made a joke about Newport, where Izzy was from, which she didn’t seem to like. From then on we were her targets, albeit nobody else seemed to talk to them so perhaps it was just because we were talking to them they engaged with us.
Before long we found our first sighting – a Canadian submarine on manoeuvres. It was a dinky thing, something Putin would probably not be too concerned about. Pretty cool to see though.
Our first stop was where Russ thought we might see some humpback whales. And boy did he deliver – they were all around us! Over the course of the next hour we saw around (I would guess) 10 individuals. Russ moved us around when they deep dived (tail, or fluke, in the air) as they would be gone for around 8 minutes but could surface anywhere. We saw so many doing their general surface… sink… surface…. then eventually deep diving with tail in the air. Photo bomb incoming….. but keep reading as there’s a lot more to say and see!
By this point we’d all seen a lot of humpbacks, so time to move on. Another 30 minutes or so towards the US coast we ended up in a bay and right there were a small number of Orca (killer whales). Then more appeared, around a couple of dozen in what’s called a “t-party” (the “t” meaning transient, as Orcas are transient not migratory) – a sort of social gathering of multiple matriarchal groups. Now, we thought this was pretty cool, but our guides were beside themselves. Apparently this is a super-rare event. We spent ages watching the group move together, the males playing with each other, lots of tail slapping and rolling. It was incredible to watch. To give a sense of scale, the big males’ dorsal (back) fin can be around 2m tall.
At one point a large police boat was heading top speed for the US coast straight into the path of the Orca, much to the guides’ disgust. We were only allowed to get within 200m of the Orca, the closest anyone is allowed (400m is usual) but the police clearly hadn’t seen them….then they did and stopped dead. Eventually the Orca glided right past them, and they clearly enjoyed it with their phones out videoing the event, before they motored off once the Orca had passed.
We then changed locations, found more humpbacks, seals, and the submarine (again), before heading back towards Victoria.
Back in Victoria and having missed lunch (late breakfast) we went into town to find pizza (which wasn’t enough, so we got kebabs too!) before heading back to the hotel.
Jo and I finished the evening with cocktails on the terrace of the hotel, and got to see a fantastic sunset.
