January 14th: Whale Watching

 



Today I got sunburned while whale watching. We left Hilo early in the morning so that we could drive to Kona to whale watch. At the beginning of the tour, I wanted to sit on the top, cause ya know, the top. However, this proved a mistake and a poor judgement. The sun was blinding. Even when it was behind the clouds it reflected off of them and the ocean and was so powerful. I didn’t expect the tour to last as long as it did: 3 hours instead of 2. We saw two fins in the first hour, but did not slow down to watch any until the third hour. It was really cool to learn about the whales once we saw them, but I was very drained from being in the sun for a 3rd hour and fighting my very mild motion sickness. We learned about how the calves stay underwater for about 5 minutes and their mothers come up for air every 30 minutes. This made spotting them hard, but watching them easy. We also learned how to tell whales apart. All whales have different undersides of their tail and the different variations is how you tell them apart. Every whale has distinct markings whether they are dark blue, white, black, etc. After whale watching we drove to a downtown area to explore, eat lunch, and eat dinner. Me and Corie ate brunch food for lunch and I got samosas for dinner. We then drove to the airport and left for LAX  around 11 o’clock. 

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