WHALES! The magic of seeing them and the difficulty of photographing! I spent 4 hours on the ocean this morning trying to do that. Not easy, but a real rush and satisfaction. None of our whales today jumped out of the water like you see in the classic photo and we were told that it doesn’t happen very often. In fact they even have some days when no whales are seen, so we were lucky to see 5 or more!
Our guide said all of these are humpback whales, though they looked like two different species to me, but maybe some are juveniles which are often different in many other species.
And we had 4 “species” of people on our boat! A group from Argentina, another group from Chili, a family from Costa Rica, and one little old man American who now lives in Costa Rica. Guess which language was spoken on this tour! 🙂
I’ll do another post tomorrow with scenery, boats, swimming and other information, but these photos are just a few of my whale photos – my reason for being here. CLICK IMAGE TO SEE LARGER.
Whales in Costa Rica
The full size versions of these photos are in my Trip Gallery for 2019 Cristal Ballena, Uvita, sub-gallery Whales. I’m developing this trip gallery day by day during the trip. And read about my hotel at their site: Cristal Ballena Hotel.
As a matter of information, all these whales are from the south, along the Pacific coast of South America and possibly from Antarctic. They come here every July-October for the warm waters and to calve their babies. Then in December to March we have whales coming from the Pacific coast of the States and Canada and as far north as Alaska and the Arctic and Russia. But we don’t get as many of these in Costa Rica because some go to Hawaii.
Ships are expendable; the whales are not.
~Paul Watson
¡Pura Vida!
This trip gallery: 2019-September 13-21–Cristal Ballena, Uvita
Barbara and I saw humpbacks in Alaska in May of this year. But no jumping either! Guides said that they eat in Alaska, then migrate to Hawaii where they fast and mate … and jump! Of course, there are other herds with different patterns around the Pacific.
Interesting to know Charles! A few of those whales from Alaska and California come to Costa Rica Dec-Mar but most go to Hawaii. Our July-October whales come from South America here every year. Amazing!