Last Monday we went on an early-morning Whale Watching Raft Adventure with Captain Steve. We’ve done this once before with Peggy and Verne (who do it every year) and this year Ryan and Krysten joined us as well. As the sun was rising, we headed out from the Mala Boat Ramp on our zodiac raft in search of whales. We chose seats in the very back. You can see that Bill had to tie his hat on to prevent it from flying away.
It wasn’t long before we spotted some in the distance. In order to protect the whales, the boats must not get any closer than 100 yards away, so at that distance the engines were turned off and we floated. Of course, there’s no regulation telling the whale to remain a certain distance from the boat and fortunately for us whale-watchers the whales do often swim closer to the boat. At one point on our outing, an adult whale swam right under our zodiac! We were too flustered to get any photos of it, but Bill was able to capture the difficult shot of a diving whale’s tail. On the left you get some idea of how close we were & on the right he zoomed in on that magnificent sight!
We also were able to see schools of spinner dolphins and bottlenose dolphins before it was time to head back to shore. All too soon we had to high-tail it back so Captain Steve wouldn’t be late for his next group. The exhilarating ride back past the beautiful west Maui mountains was a wonderful way to end our adventure!
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! One morning, we didn’t even have to leave our resort to see another one of our favorite Hawaiian animals – a green sea turtle. We’ve seen them plenty of times while snorkeling, but never on the beach before. This juvenile crawled onto the sand to warm up, stayed a few hours, and then lumbered back into the ocean. If you look closely, you can see the circle it made in the sand as it returned to the water. So cool to see!
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