Trinity and Whales

Yesterday was a glorious day!  Not only was it the most beautiful day weather-wise since we’ve been here, but we had a lot going on today.

The first thing we did was head down to Dunfield.  I wanted to recreate the image I had of the last time we were here.  There was an iceberg in the bay in front of us, and whales to the left of us.  Well, that didn’t happen.  Turns out there are 2 bays (one each side of the village) and I couldn’t really remember how it worked.  Anyway, there were no icebergs, nor whales.  But that was OK.  We continued up the road to Fort Point Lighthouse.  Wow, what a beautiful spot.

It juts a long way into the bay, and you can see Trinity across the way, not very far.

I thought this house on the right looked a little crooked.

Anyway, another beautiful area.

These 2 were lollygagging around.

Nice little beach.  Don’t think any of us are going swimming though.  And this got much rougher before we left.  I think the tide is coming in.

So we left here and headed over to Trinity.  We checked out the Rising Tide Theatre and got some tickets, then found a place for lunch.  This is what we were looking at at lunch time.

We had to put Gerard in the stocks for panhandling on the wharf.

But we let him out when we found he bought these.  They were chocolate mints.  We just howled at the package label.

These are a couple of scenes from the outdoor play.  About 2 hours of the history of Trinity.  Some humour, some doses of reality.  We walk around different parts of the town following the actors.  They’ve been doing it about 20 years now, twice a week during the tourist season.  Gotta do it at least once.  (We’ve done it twice.)

So during our time in Trinity, we found out that the whale tours had been spotting quite a few whales.  Judy and I really wanted to see some.  Gerard and John weren’t so keen on doing a 3-hour tour out on the water.  So Judy and I booked a tour starting at 5 pm.  And according to most people, the best time 

to see them was in the evening.  At 5 pm, Judy and I got on our suits...

and away we went!  The suits were also our life “jackets”.  The boats were “zodiacs”.  Our first stop was near the cliffs and we saw these baby sea gulls - just like their parents.

Our first whale we saw was a Minke Whale.  One of the largest there is.  But we only ever saw part of the back and the dorsal fin.

And then we saw Humpback after Humpback after Humpback.  Just incredible the number of whales we saw.  This is the back of one.

And I have so many pictures of whale tails, I couldn’t possibly put them all here.  But here are some...just to give you an idea.  And yes, this is how close we were.  Almost scary at times.  Some were taken with my telephoto lens, but not that far away.  Others, I had to put down the telephoto lens because they were too close!

We were just in awe every time we saw them.  They were so predictable in their behaviour.  We thoroughly enjoyed the 3 hours out on the boat.  Gerard and John picked us up around 8:30 (our 3-hour tour was about 3-1/2 hours).  A guy on our boat had been on it the night before and he said it was the most incredible whale tour he’s ever been on, and he’s been on about 70 of them around the world.  He opted out of a dinner theatre to do the whale tour again.  That kinda says something.

Needless to say, and incredible day and evening.  But more to do in the Trinity and Bonavista area!