Whales, whales, whales!

You'll NEVER guess what this post is about!

Anyway, on Monday we had the day in Tofino. I'd signed up for a trip to some hot springs, but that wasn't till 11:30am. So I slept in until some of my tour members woke me up at 8:45am with all their noise (rude!) , and then went to check out an art gallery that I'd seen on our way in.

BEAUTIFUL. I loved this guys art - it's like stylised, with native elements, or just straight native design - totally bought the book of his work. And I'm set for christmas cards this year, too :)

Anyway, then we went on the trip to the hot springs. We went in a sort of speed boat that the coast guard uses for marine rescues up here - like a boat crossed with an inflated inner tube. And we had to wear these sexy fashion statement floatation suits - big bright orange/red ones - to keep us warm and act as a life jacket if we fell overboard.

The weather was gorgeous, and the sea was calm. As part of the 2 hour trip to the springs we looked out for whales - and whoa did we see whales!!!

Tour guide said it was one of the best days in the year - first we saw 4 humpbacks in different spots - one was totally hyperactive and kept jumping out of the water and everything.

We also saw bald eagles, a sea otter and a sea lion.

The hot springs were cool, as was the half hour walk through forest to get to them.

After the springs, I went up on a big rock to get a look at the view, and take some photos. I nearly dropped my camera when I saw 3 fins passing me in the ocean beneath my rock. Took some shots because I thought they'd be dolphins or something!!! They looked too big for that, but their fins weren't pointy enough to be orcas.

Long story short, I showed my pics to the others on my tour, and then to the tour guide. Turns out they WERE orcas, and then we got to go looking for them to see if we could find them - all because of my random shots!! They were females - their fins aren't as tall as the males.

Totally found a pod of like, 7 orcas after a short trip; one swam RIGHT under our boat. Our boat was smaller and quieter than the bigger ones, so we could get closer - also, our guide had a HUGE camera to get ID shots of the whales to give to researchers - so he wanted the shots.

THEN we saw a grey whale - just once, and later ran into ANOTHER pod of orcas, this time with a male with the huge fin!!! It was so awesome, and my camera didn't run out of batteries (so glad). Had to go back and delete some stuff when I ran out of memory though.