Vancouver Part 2 - Whale watching

After my reunion and ‘Fly Over Canada’ the day before, I was up bright and early the next morning ready for an experience I always had hoped for - to see whales! I have always loved watching films of those magnificent creatures. 

All my fellow whale-watchers and I had to be at the office of the whale-watching company at a nearby hotel at 7.30 am, dressed up in many layers and ready for a 4-hour cruise into the bays between many of the islands around Vancouver and beyond, in the hope of seeing some. In fact they guaranteed we would see some!  (It transpired they knew where certain pods of Orcas hang around at that time; any humpbacks would be a bonus.) 

Anyhow, the sea was very rough that day, it drizzled  and the strong wind felt like it was blowing straight across from the Arctic Circle. There was virtually no shelter on the big catamaran so we just had to brave the elements. However, after more than two hours of freezing to death, we finally saw quite a few Orcas swimming around the edges of two neighbouring bays, though they kept their distance from the boat. It was very hard to anticipate when and where they would break the surface next, so my photographs had to be taken using guesswork and the zoom lens. With the rough weather conditions and the battle to get a spot amongst the other passengers to take the photos, they are not very good. But at least I saw these smaller whales in the flesh and they were just as magnificent as I expected. Their raw power and their togetherness shown by their synchronised swimming and blowing were just awesome to see! 

It was a shame we did not see any humpback whales, but we did see some seals on a tiny rock in the middle of one bay and some cormorants on a small island.

After that excitement we headed to Vancouver Island, arriving there at almost 1 pm. I had no idea until that cruise that despite its larger population, Vancouver is not the capital of British Columbia - Victoria on Vancouver Island is! My next post will be about my exploration of the beautiful and very famous Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island. 

Our boat.

Sailing out of Vancouver Harbour. 

Some of the seals.

I thought I saw a baby whale across its mother, but cannot be sure. 

The colony of cormorants.