Photo(s) of the Day February 26th

Sophie is right at home on the sea, it seems

0

One very happy Whale Watching family!

0

Victory!

0

Today started in tears for me, as we almost lost our opportunity to do the one thing that I was most looking forward to during this vacation. Our whale watching excursion in Dominica was set to be one of the absolute highlights of the trip for me, and it was certainly the event that I had spent the most time researching to make “just right”. Based on comments from other Cruise Critic members and reviews in Trip Advisor we chose to book a private Whale Watching charter with Island Style Fishing and Whale Watching, and disembarked the ship in the morning to meet Captain Jerry at the Fort Young Hotel. When we met him he looked pretty unhappy, and we soon found out it was because a gasket had blown in his boats engine and he wasn’t able to take us on our excursion after all. I was devastated, having so looked forward to our private tour of the area where sperm whales give birth and raise their young... thanks to Chris’s quick thinking we headed back to our ship and straight to the excursion desk, where with 10 minutes to spare we managed to slip onto the cruise line’s official Whale Watching tour. It may not have been exactly what I had envisioned, but what I had most hoped for came to pass anyway... throughout our three hour trip we saw three groups of sperm whales, including at least one with a baby. The whole thing was incredibly beautiful – the whales were silent and graceful despite their enormous size, and we were lucky that our guides knew enough about the whale’s movements that they were able to let us know exactly when they were going to surface and dive. One pod we saw was lunching on a giant squid, which while slightly macabre also made for some interesting viewing – all in all it was a success, despite the day’s rocky beginning.

Other Vacation notes for today:

Sophie has become quite the little celebrity in some circles on the ship... the other day when we were walking through the Grand Promenade the Cruise Director Mercedes spotted Sophie from across the hall and called "Hello my little star!", prompting Sophie to run over and give her a big hug. Now, Sophie had told us that she "made a video" in Adventure Ocean the other day, where she answered some questions about herself - we assumed that it was one of the activities they were doing to prepare for the kid's talent show. Turns out she was actually chosen to be interviewed by the cruise director, and her interview was shown on the on board television channel for all to see - what a hoot! Our favourite moment was when the Cruise Director asked her if she had or wanted a boyfriend, to which Sophie answered "no" and then volunteered that her cat Georgie at home really wanted a boyfriend though (she was in heat shortly before we left for vacation.) We video taped the interview when we saw it on the television in our room, and I'm pretty sure our hoots of laughter drowned out the next question that Mercedes asked her!

0