if you're looking for a whale of a time....

Bec, Vincent, I, George, Agnes, and Emily went on the Ocean Dreaming yesterday in pursuit of migrating Humpback whales.
And the whale-gods were definitely on our side because we didnt' even leave Sydney Harbour for five minutes when we met up with a pod of three Humpbacks meandering back to their homes in the south.
(can you see the one under the water--huge!)
And even luckier for us, they weren't in any hurry to be anywhere so they hung out and "mugged"* our boat a few times! Incidentally, when the first mugging was occuring another whale-watching boat came up right next to us--which is illegal and it really irritated our whale-master-guide-driver. However, to make lemonade out of lemons--it did give us a good view of how big whales really are! 'Massive' is one word that comes to mind.
We had such a lovely time! And I think the consensus is that if any of you come to visit--we'll be happy to take you too, because it's really worth it to go again...and again. :)
Here are a few other photos our new whale friends! They tell the story better than I can...

(note-this was taken by a member of the Ocean Dreaming staff--he had a waaaay better camera than we did, so Bec bought me the photos he took for my birthday! THANKS BEC!)

See the full lot of photos here!

* a mugging occurs when a whale swims right up to a boat so that it can't use its motors (we wouldn't want to hurt the fellow). The law says that it is illegal to approach a whale closer than 100m, but if it swims up to you--you must turn off your motors so not to harm the anima