(more and higher resolution photos here)
On Friday morning Sam finished her acai bowl leftovers from the previous day and I drove down to Basik for a new one. Apparently the little bowls of cold acai smoothie, fresh fruit and granola are very popular on the islands. Sam and I are looking into figuring out how to reproduce them in LA we enjoyed them for breakfast so much. After I finished up some freelance work at the hotel lobby (wifi in hotels in Hawaii is generally bad) we walked down the street to do some souvenir shopping and see the palace. On the palace lawn was a performing group of musicians.
Afterwards we walked to Umeke’s again to get more poke for lunch. From there we walked to the pier for a scheduled Body Glove whale watching tour.
After going out on the water for only a few minutes we were approached by two teenage humpback whales. They swam under the boat back and forth and then started bobbing their heads straight up in the air above the water to look at us clearly.
The tour operators, who do this every day for a living, started freaking out. They said this was the best tour of the year so far, and probably one of the top three they’d ever done. They started getting out their own cameras (and a go-pro set up to be stuck under water) and told us that they needed to record this visit from the whales for their own future marketing. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any of these videos on their website… but Sam started taking her own.
Sam cut off the guy’s whale juices joke, you’d think the punchline would be something impressive since the guys does it for a living, but it’snot. Get it?
After about twenty minutes the inquisitive whales dove down and didn’t return. It didn’t matter though, as the excitement for the day wasn’t finished. For a while we observed a calf and it’s mother, who were being pursued by an aggressive male. They never came closer than a hundred yards from the boat, but we got to observe a lot of behavior.
When those three swam off we headed south and started to see some whales breaching and fighting, which means bashing their heads into the surface of the water.
A little further down still we started to see dolphins, a lot of dolphins.
And, in their midst, was an adult male humpback spinning end over end as the dolphins harassed him.
This activity actually headed straight towards our boat, which the extremely excited dolphins (called “spinners”) leaping out of the water and zipping around the boat. The whale eventually splashed right next to the boat, nearly hitting it.
Since the rules dictate the boat captain must kill the engines when we get close to whales we sat there and watched this display keep going south past us. At this point our guides must had decided we’d gotten more than our money’s worth as they decided to go back north along the coast.
As if in protest (“what, leaving already?”) a large male came about 100 yards from us and did at least five acrobatic breaches. These were the breaches you’ve seen on TV in the prudential commercials, a leaping backflip, flipper toss and massive backwards splashdown, all that good stuff.
After the tour we rested at the hotel for a bit before walking down the street to the Royal Kona Luau.
After the Luau it was still early so we walked up to the Pier to take some night shots back across at Kona.
