Getting Up Close and Personal with Wildlife

What a day! What a day! We woke up at 5am, drove to the other side of the island and hopped aboard a charter boat for a day on the ocean. We went from the south part of the island all the way around the west side and up to the Na'pali Coast on the north side. I was really windy. I wore sweatpants and a fleece packet over my swimsuit for nearly the entire ride - ha! Even though we smeared the sunscreen on pretty darn thick, we still got too much sun. We are going to sleep like little kids tonight after all the fresh air we got. Ready for some pictures? Here they come.

Our first humpback whale sighting of the day.

There, that's a little better. The island in the background is Ni'ihau which is a private island owner by the Hawaiian Robinson family and they do not allow tourists {although they did allow some scenes from Jurassic Park to be filmed there}.

View of the west coast of Kauai. The fields to the left are growing corn. The mountains in the background are those of Waimea Canyon.

These whales were so close to us! It was an unbelievable experience.

Two for the price of one!
We learned that the underside of a whales tail {the white in the above picture} is their finger print; no two are alike!

This is actually just one whale - from blow hole to tail.

Another view of Kauai's west coast.

This is a Navy base on the north west part of the island. The beach is called Barking Sands beach and it is actually 15 miles long. The sand is coated with silica and therefore when water runs over it, it sounds like the sand is barking.

This picture is just to give perspective at just how close we got to these humpback whales.

These humpback whales are huge. This is only one whale in this picture again. I guess they can be upwards of 45 feet long!

This is the beginning of the Na'pali coast. Up top is a military/NASA establishment.

We ran into a pack of bottlenose dolphins. These next pictures are straight out of the camera - no zooming in. This dolphins were right up next to the boat!!

This is the first thing we saw and knew we were in for some wildlife!

Bottlenose Dolphins!! Look at how close the got to us and how blue to ocean water is!

These dolphins were everywhere!

Last year when I was on the Big Island, we took a boat trip and went through a pack of Spinner Dolphins but Ryan wasn't with and he's never been able to see dolphins up close so I was so happy that we were able to see them today! It was awesome!! After the dolphins left, the crew on the boat informed us that they had been seeing a humpback and her young calf in the vicinity for about the past week. Shortly after that, the little calf literally came and swam right along the side of the boat - the side of the boat that we happened to be standing on. You'll have to take my word for it, because these pictures didn't turn out, but the whale was literally within inches to feet of us! It was incredible!

The baby humpback is right under these waves.

The babe was so close. Note the shadow on the water from the boat. Literally right under foot.
{I'm sure this kids mom had a couple words with him - ha!}

Momma humpback was not far away.

Now onto the Na'pali Coast. I must say that I was kind of disappointed when I looked at these pictures tonight. I didn't realize at the time that I had sea spray all over the camera lens for a vast majority of these pictures! It was so stinkin' bright out there that it was even hard to see anything other than the outline of the Na'pali Coast.

This valley is where they filmed a large portion of Jurassic Park. {Disregard all the water spots.}

The sun was soooo bright!

The Na'pali Coast. It's even more beautiful in person.

After we turned around and started heading back down the coast to the port, we came across a momma humpback and her calf. They were so close to us that the captain just shut off the boat's engine so we could sit and watch them. According to the crew, the calf was less than a week old. For a majority of the time, the mom was nursing her baby so she stayed close to the surface. When these baby humpbacks are first born, they can gain 100-150 lbs per DAY in the first few weeks! The baby hadn't learned how to come up for air yet, so we saw the mom pushing the babe up to the surface every so often. The baby was also learning how to use it's fins as well. It was so cool to be so close to these huge animals. This was literally a once in a lifetime experience.

Mom and baby!

Baby is testing out it's {his? hers?} fins.

Big momma humpback whale.

Baby whale tail.

The babe is coming up for air.

Look ma! No hands!

This little baby humpback was about 10 feet long. You can almost see the entire baby in this picture.

Mom is pushing baby up for air as the baby is trying to figure out how to coordinate movements.

Baby fin!

Goodbye.

 And are you ready for the grand finale of this Mom/Baby humpback whale encounter? Here it is!

Believe it or not, this trip actually does get better from here. Our next wildlife adventure was a Hawaiian Monk Seal. I can't believe we got a chance to see another one.

We did make a pit stop to snorkel.  We were planning on actually scuba diving but Ryan unfortunately has a sinus infection and we didn't think a sinus infection and the pressure from scuba diving would mix very well. We snorkeled for all of about 10-15 minutes before going back to the boat. The water was pretty rough and although there was a lot of coral to look at, there weren't too many fish. Oh well. It was fun to get out and swim in the ocean though.

Our self portrait prior to going swimming.

As we were almost back to part, the captain came over the loud speaker to inform us that their appeared to be a "heat run" taking place. Apparently a heat run is where the male whales run after the female whale who is in heat and in the process make a lot of ruckus. After the announcement of the heat run, they started playing Bay Company's Feel Like Makin' Love song - ha!

Making lots of ruckus in the water to draw attention to himself.

Three males after a female.

This is a none-zoomed-in picture just to put things into perspective regarding how close we were to these guys!

Ok, here's another grand finale photo op :)

How awesome is this picture!

All-in-all is was a fantastic day! I'm not wanting to leave for home tomorrow considering Omaha is getting a bunch of snow right now :( I'm sure we'll have a driveway full of snow by the time we get home.

~Ashley