Day Twenty Five - Montanita Whale Watching

We finally saw the whales today!!

We were up early again for breakfast. I opted for the mega tostada again, and had half of it to take away with me! It was a bit mushy by the time I got round to eating the second half, and very messy but still tasted good!

Today we were getting public transport to the whale watching, so our guy flagged down the bus and we were on our way! We got off at this random stop near Puerto Lopez, and piled into a pick up truck who dropped us at the whale watching meeting point.

The sun was out when we got onto our boat, and we'd seen a turtle swimming about in the bay from the jetty which was cool! We travelled out for quite a while, to the point where we couldn't even see the shore as the cloud had come in, although it was still bright and warm.

We saw our first whale way in the distance and made a beeline for him. Our guides got us sitting either up the top of the boat, or (me and Brendan) on the front of the boat for a better view.

We then saw a whale not far from up come up vertically out of the water and breach. It was incredible but as it was our first close sighting, we missed a bit of it as we didn't know where we were looking! From then on for the next hour, we followed this pod of five whales. They didn't breach again but they were super close to the boat, maybe 5 meters from the boat at closest and they kept bobbing back up out of the water and blowing water from their blowholes. We got a bit wet at one point when one decided to blow its 'whale spit' all over us!!

There were a few breaks between the whales coming up and then disappearing again, and as I was lounged against the front of the boat, my eyes did close for a bit at some points, and I knew I'd hear when the next whale came up from the squeaks of excitement from our group!

After a couple of hours, we headed inland to do a spot of snorkelling. We didn't really see much, and I'd totally forgotten the concept of snorkelling (trying to breathe through my nose and panicking slightly!) but it was interesting. Back in the boat, we had a quick lunch of sandwiches and this banana chocolate loaf which was very nice!!

Our group then headed back to the mainland, back to the bus stop and waited for the next bus to Montanita to pass by. Me and Brendan sat next to a window which unfortunately was broken and kept sliding open, which made for a very cold and uncomfortable journey back!!

Back in Montanita, of course the sun was covered by clouds, but we managed to complete our Galapagos booking which was super exciting!! We did this by bank transfer which made us a bit nervous that we could have just transferred a tonne of money to a random company!! Fingers crossed!

We ate at the 241 place again, both choosing the pasta alfredo and then went back to the hostel for a swift closs and bed! We were exhausted!!