A Whale of a time? Orcas we did!
We were up early today to get the ferry across to Vancouver Island. The early rise was self inflicted: I reckoned that Vancouver Island was about the size of the Isle of Wight, but as we found out yesterday it is more like the size of England and therefore the journey across on the ferry and driving from the ferry port to Victoria, the city on the island takes a lot longer. About four and half hours each way, hence the early rise.
It was a pleasant enough crossing on the ferry and we enjoyed watching the Chinese tourists hand feeding the sea gulls (sorry, just gulls in this politically correct World). The Vancouver bus company is very well organised and you get a bus that goes from downtown Vancouver, across on the ferry and drops you off in Victoria.
Victoria itself is very British, or at least 19 century British, which is probably where they got the name from. We found out that Vancouver Island and the city are named after a Royal Navy commander who “first” sailed around the island. We’ve come across a lot of history like this: apparently nothing happened before the European arrived en mass in the 17th century. This really annoys me, so I’ve decided that it is going to be a mission while we’re here for us to find out about pre-European history.
After a short walk along the harbour front we had lunch in a shopping mall and Sarah decided that she didn’t fancy going whale watching as the sea sounded like it would be too rough for the small lifeboat sized dinghy we were booked to go out on.
I decided I’d still go as the brochures seemed to virtually guarantee I’d see a huge whale jumping clear out of the water and making a huge splash. Sarah waved goodbye as the little boat headed out of the harbour. After the sales lady had told us there was a 70% chance of seeing whales, we got the real story from the guide who told us it was really difficult to see whales this time of year and that they had lost track of them since yesterday afternoon. Great! We headed out towards a lighthouse midway between Vancouver Island and Washington state in the US, which is where some transitory killer whales had been seen. The proper name for killer whales is orca apparently. I think some of them were finding other whales to prejudice against the name Killer Whale. Anyway, the guide was mid-way through telling us the difference between transitory and resident orcas (it wasn’t a difficult one to work out) when we spotted a couple of tall black fins in the distance. I emphasise that this was in the far, far distance. The guide took the boat in the direction of the orcas but by the time we got there they had gone on a dive. We waited for five minutes or so for the whales to emerge and right on queue they did. About a mile away. We headed off in their direction again and again they had dived by the time we got close to them. This went on for twenty minutes or so and as two other sightseeing boats had turned up, our guide said we’d look elsewhere so as not to scare the whales.
We headed to the lighthouse and saw some sealions and cormorants on a rocky outcrop. But we wanted to see whales. We were running out of time but the location we’d last seen the whales was on the way back to the harbour so we stopped for a while near one of the other boats we’d seen earlier. We were just about to give up and head home when someone on our boat spotted a whale fin about 500 metres away. Too far away to get a good photo so I used our binoculars. I’d just focussed them where everyone was pointing and right in the middle of my view a killer whale breached the water line, nose first right up to fins.
Whilst I was all at sea, Sarah had walked around Victoria and visited the markets and town squares, which she said were nice.
We got the bus and ferry back to Vancouver and cooked the pasta we’d bought in the nice food store yesterday. It wasn’t very nice.
It was a pleasant enough crossing on the ferry and we enjoyed watching the Chinese tourists hand feeding the sea gulls (sorry, just gulls in this politically correct World). The Vancouver bus company is very well organised and you get a bus that goes from downtown Vancouver, across on the ferry and drops you off in Victoria.
Victoria itself is very British, or at least 19 century British, which is probably where they got the name from. We found out that Vancouver Island and the city are named after a Royal Navy commander who “first” sailed around the island. We’ve come across a lot of history like this: apparently nothing happened before the European arrived en mass in the 17th century. This really annoys me, so I’ve decided that it is going to be a mission while we’re here for us to find out about pre-European history.
After a short walk along the harbour front we had lunch in a shopping mall and Sarah decided that she didn’t fancy going whale watching as the sea sounded like it would be too rough for the small lifeboat sized dinghy we were booked to go out on.
I decided I’d still go as the brochures seemed to virtually guarantee I’d see a huge whale jumping clear out of the water and making a huge splash. Sarah waved goodbye as the little boat headed out of the harbour. After the sales lady had told us there was a 70% chance of seeing whales, we got the real story from the guide who told us it was really difficult to see whales this time of year and that they had lost track of them since yesterday afternoon. Great! We headed out towards a lighthouse midway between Vancouver Island and Washington state in the US, which is where some transitory killer whales had been seen. The proper name for killer whales is orca apparently. I think some of them were finding other whales to prejudice against the name Killer Whale. Anyway, the guide was mid-way through telling us the difference between transitory and resident orcas (it wasn’t a difficult one to work out) when we spotted a couple of tall black fins in the distance. I emphasise that this was in the far, far distance. The guide took the boat in the direction of the orcas but by the time we got there they had gone on a dive. We waited for five minutes or so for the whales to emerge and right on queue they did. About a mile away. We headed off in their direction again and again they had dived by the time we got close to them. This went on for twenty minutes or so and as two other sightseeing boats had turned up, our guide said we’d look elsewhere so as not to scare the whales.
We headed to the lighthouse and saw some sealions and cormorants on a rocky outcrop. But we wanted to see whales. We were running out of time but the location we’d last seen the whales was on the way back to the harbour so we stopped for a while near one of the other boats we’d seen earlier. We were just about to give up and head home when someone on our boat spotted a whale fin about 500 metres away. Too far away to get a good photo so I used our binoculars. I’d just focussed them where everyone was pointing and right in the middle of my view a killer whale breached the water line, nose first right up to fins.
Whilst I was all at sea, Sarah had walked around Victoria and visited the markets and town squares, which she said were nice.
We got the bus and ferry back to Vancouver and cooked the pasta we’d bought in the nice food store yesterday. It wasn’t very nice.
posted by Ian @ 10:13 pm
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