I knew that I recognized the woman but I couldn't place which class. After 20 years, you loose track. She said, "Abby Carmichael." I couldn't believe it. She was one of my first students in NC. I would say going back to 2001. She was also one of my favorites.
She was 18 years old back then. It was so nice to see her again. We caught up and see each other at the gym several times a week.
No one in my family wanted to go Whale Watching because there lots of sea sick stories. I knew it was worth it if you see some great whales. Abby was all about it so we went this past Sunday. So great!
Here I am before we left. OK, the story with my eye is that our last day in Sapporo, we are catching the bus to go back to the airport and Bill says, "Oh my God, honey, your eye!" Well, I had to wait an hour until we got to the airport to see what happened. I could see people staring. It is pretty bad. After five days, it hasn't changed much. The doctor says it is a broken blood vessel and may take 2-4 weeks to clear.
I couldn't even use the magic of Photoshop to doctor it out of my photo if I tried. Got a lot those pesky crow's feet though!
Here we are before the trip. nervous about getting sea sick but very excited.
It takes about 25 minutes to get out to the area that the whales are. The whales are off the Kerama Islands. The Keramas have some of the best diving and snorkeling in the world. The water is like drinking water. Bill and I stayed at a hotel in the Keramas back in September 2010. We had a great time snorkeling.
I learned from Whale Watching in Hawaii, that you look for the blow hole spray. Literally, "there she blows."
Abby and I moved up to the front of the boat. Only one other lady joined us. It was very cloudy and a little windy but we wanted to get a good view. Of course, in Japan, we had to take our shoes off to sit up on the front deck.
We spotted one really close by!
This is a good shot of the blow hole.
We realized that you get about 1 minute of great views, then you wait for about 10 minutes until you spot some whales.
Here we are waiting for some whales. You can see it was quite cloudy, we almost expected rain. But you will see it cleared up quite a bit and ended up being really nice. We were lucky.
When a boat spots a whale, all of us go as fast we can and chase it. It was kind of exciting when we heard the engine start up and we knew we were off to spot another group.
As you can see the sun came out and it was beautiful. By that time, everyone figured out that the best place to be was up where we were so we had to move over and share some space. I didn't mind though because I already had great shot and I wanted to just watch the whales instead of photograph. Also, the extra people were a great wind block.
Our last group of whales was really close by.
Here are some shots of the area. Even if we didn't see any whales, it was a beautiful place for a boat trip. We will go on a Kerama Islands Snorkeling excursion this summer. It is just a quick day trip.
Another great day!!
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