Monday 21 August – Swimming with Whales

Quinn was on board before 9am as Kane had come to help Rowan clean PolePole’s bottom, which is looking like an emerald hanging garden. Quinn and I have really bonded, he follows me around the boat faithfully, I have to admit mainly because he thinks the pack of dog treats I bought him are delicious. Plus I always share my breakfast bacon with him which he really appreciates.

Around midday Rowan and I headed to the restaurant Tama Hau at the end of Opunohu Bay (we are anchored at the entrance). It has a small marina and dinghy dock where we could leave JeldiJeldi while we went on our whale watching trip. We had lunch there as payment for using their dock and had a very good Poisson Cru au lait de Coco, this is the main dish here in French Polynesia. We were also pleased to see our same transvestite waiter from last time, beautifully turned out, so much better than the rather large female waitress! French Polynesia has been very accepting of the gay community for generations apparently, if a family has no daughters the youngest son was often brought us as a girl.

The tour taxi picked us up on the side of the road and we headed north for about 20 minutes to a spot on a beach where our boat was waiting. Doris was our French tour guide and she was very good at giving us our briefing in English. There were 8 of us on board, everyone else was French. We had a marine biologist on board recording and identifying the whales, by the white underside of their tails. We had pretty low expectations of the trip but they felt very respectful of these amazing humpback whales that come down here en masse from their cold water territories up North. The whales just come for the warmer water, and to breed, all their main feeding of krill happens in the cold water.

It took about half an hour to get out of the reef and into the open water. Luckily the direction we went was calm seas and it wasn’t long before we saw our first spout. The boat has to keep 100 metres away and we cant swim too close. There was another boat there and we waited for them for a while before we went into the water. Sadly the whale must have moved on as we did not see it. Back in the boat we were scouting the water for spouts and found some more, we repeated the whole ritual slipping into the water so as not to disturb them, but again they disappeared by the time we got close. By this stage we were quite tired and cold from being in the water for a while, and thought that was it. But luck was on our side and our driver spotted a whale with no other boats about, we got into the water and were rewarded with the most spectacular experience – this mother and young Humpback whale coming slowly towards us. The youngster was glued to mum’s side but as they got closer the little one left the mum’s side and had a little swim around. It was all over in a flash but it was truly a magical experience. What a way to end the trip.

Rowan’s go pro footage of the mum and young Humpback whale

Everyone was frozen on the return and I was very glad of my jacket I had packed. We stopped off at Sting Ray city where we visited yesterday, Rowan and I didn’t swim as we were cold and had already done it, but the rest of the crew jumped in to swim with the sharks and sting rays – they were all a lot younger than us. We enjoyed a rum punch and a basket of fresh fruit that the tour provided as sustenance!

Sharks and Sting rays viewed from the boat, on our return

Rum punches and fruit to warm us up

It was getting dark by the time we got back, the wind had died and we had a lovely comfy dingy ride back to PolePole with the mountains silhouetted by the sunset colours. We were pretty tired on our return, we turned the hot water tanks on and had our first hot shower in FP. Thankfully we are not heading off tonight which had been the original plan on Sunday, the forecast was for no wind all week and we need to move on, but luckily the forecast has changed and there will be a little wind on Thursday evening, so we will leave then for our night crossing to the next island Huahine.

Sunset, dark weather to the right

Our dinghy ride back to PolePole