Whale Trip Six – Hawaii just for the fun of it. Nikki loves Hawaii and wanted us all to go.

Nikki and her family went to Oahu for their entire stay in Hawaii. My family decided to island hop. Guess what I did? I found out what island had the most whales and where. Then I found a place to stay where I would have the best chance of seeing whales and that turned out to be Maui.

The beautiful humpbacks hang out around the island of Maui during the winter months. I thought I might see a whale here and there, but no, my first morning with coffee in my hand looking at the ocean I watched humpbacks breach out in the distance. I had gone on a whale watching trip back in Boston several years ago. I went hoping to see a humpback breach because that was what the advertisement said and promised, but no luck. Now my first morning in Maui I am seeing more breaches than I can keep track of.

Oh, one more note about Boston, I did have a special moment with a humpback. I don’t like crowds, so I always find myself trying to get out of them. While everyone was on the other side of the boat, I stayed on the opposite side watching a light in the water when I noticed something moving. As it got closer to the surface, I noticed it was the humpback coming up next to the boat on my side. It surfaced through the sunrays penetrating the water I was looking at. Of course, everyone ran to my side of the boat after that, but I did get that moment with the whale all by myself. Very grateful. It was a first for me.

Back to Hawaii. Again, it was very hard for me to leave our rental home since whales were everywhere. I did have a whale watching boat scheduled as back up before we left Maui to ensure a whale sighting. I did end up going out on the whale watching boat hoping to get a closer look at the whales. Well this boat trip was miserable for me. I ended up getting very sick as did my daughter Lauren. My poor husband didn’t know which way to run to comfort us. Both of us were getting sick over the boat. As I am leaning over the boat being sick and Eric was holding my hair back, you are not going to believe what happened. Two humpbacks swam under our boat right where I was standing, sick. No one else on the boat saw them but me and Eric. So crazy.

We left Maui and headed to the big island to swim with dolphins and see an active volcano. This island ended up being our favorite. There was something special there and I knew I would be back. We visited the volcano which was active, and we viewed it at night. It was so beautiful. It looked like the lava was dancing to the sounds of nature.

The next day we drove back to Kona picked up Nikki and Ginny at the airport and got ready for our dolphin swim with Joan Ocean the next morning. I was super excited but wanted to not get too excited as there was a chance we would not see dolphins. Well we did. Shortly after getting out of the harbor we saw a manta ray. We got to swim with it, and it was cool. I wanted to do a manta ray excursion but there was no time, so I was grateful for this. The foods they eat have little stingers on them, so it was a little uncomfortable swimming with the ray because we were getting stung. Not bad though.

Dolphins came next. I have never been in the water with so many dolphins. These were spinners. The ones that jump out of the water spinning. They are fun and are very lovable. After hunting and eating all night they are ready to play and certain pods love interacting with humans. The boat operators have a good idea where they are going to be, and this helps ensure a great experience. We jumped in the water and swam with dolphins. I really couldn’t believe I was in the ocean, their home, encountering them on their terms. It really can be done. Being underwater with them was much different than anything I had encountered previously. To hear them communicate under water was so cool all by itself, let alone swimming with them. I could have stayed in the water all day with them, but I was getting yelled at to get on the boat, it was time to go. Joan, Nikki, and I were the last ones out of the ocean. It was just so hard to leave the dolphins. As we are heading back, I was thinking it would be so cool to encounter bottlenose dolphins because as a child that is what I loved. Minutes after thinking that bottlenose dolphins showed up. They were riding the waves of another boat, but then came over to ours. I had seen this behavior in videos but now I was seeing for myself. There were two of them porpoising out of the water out of our waves. You could see their eyes and the joy they felt being so close. More and more bottlenoses showed up and played in our waves. I had counted seven before we had to leave them to return to the harbor.

Big island was magical for all of us.