As I mentioned to the few people I was lucky enough to speak to back home I planned to go whale-watching. I organised a tour for this morning and it was even more exciting than I´d hoped for!
It took me quite a while to choose a tour company as Puerto Lopez is based around the whale-watching industry and so it is full of lots of tour companies and lots of tourists. Because of the tourists I wasn´t too impressed with Puerto Lopez when I first got off the bus as it doesn´t have any of the charm that the smaller towns (like Salinas) have.
This morning, however, I jumped on the boat with an Ecuadorian family and a German family and we motored out for about half an hour. The nicer family by far where the Ecuadorians, despite the language barrier. They had three delightful kids and the two small boys were enjoying getting wet at the front of the boat.
Our boat then joined about 4 others that were idling in the water and the wait began. The first sight of a whale was it´s back and it was very exciting; lots of shouting and pointing. The boats all have equipment to sense the whales and so you to know to look in the direction they are going when they all suddenly head off in the same direction. In this way we saw the back of the whales and the tail quite a few times. I have to admit at this point I was wandering what all the excitment was. Every tourist that we´ve met who´s seen the whales raves about them and says it the most amazing thing they´ve ever seen. While it was very impressive I did think it had been over-hyped.
However, it was definetely a waiting game. We got closer and closer to the whales and they began to look more and more impressive. The last ones we saw were easily the best. We were about 20m away and up until then I didn´t realise how big the whales were. They are huge - up to 15m. This means nothing until you´ve seen them. You see most of their back as they break the water and the fin and then the tail and it seems to go on forever! I think the best word to describe them is majestic. They are gorgeous creatures and I was not disappointed in any way. The one we saw even had a baby with it which you could see surfacing right next to it´s mother.
After all the excitment we got lunch and were heading back to the coast when the captain suddenly pointed ahead. There was a whole school of dolphins. I saw dolphins in India but it was nothing compared to this. The photographer said there were around 200 of them - there were so many and they moved so fast! It might have been because of just seeing a whale but they were smaller than I expected. You got to see the whole dolphin as they were all jumping out of the water. It was a really amazing sight and we were so lucky to have seen them.
I hope that everyone at home is well and that I get to speak to you all soon!
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