Whales (again)

OK, back to the whales of the St Lawrence: did an early morning trip on a zodiac out from a little village called Tadoussac (which by the way has one of the best hostels I've come across so far: friendly staff, bar, live music, and a good crowd of guests). Day didn't look promisiing due to the rain and fog. Could hardly see 10 metres at times and for the first hour it was tricky to see anything except for a few seals that didn't move out of the way of the boat quite as quickly as any whales that may have been out there, and several harbour porpoises that gave us tantalising glimpses of them in the distance.

But then, one minke plucked up courage and swam right up to within a few metres of the boat before diving. This seemed to be the trigger for the day to improve. We managed to find a spot on the river where the fog wasn't so thick and soon were surrounded by belugas in all directions. At a guess there were at least 30 of them swimming in the same direction as the boat. May even have been over 50 but it was just so difficult to count them as they were surfacing all around us.

And finally a fin whale (second largest animal on the planet after the blue whale) surfaced about 10 metres from the boat. In fact it was so close that I had no chance of getting a photo before it dived again. The camera zoom had been on maximum all morning for the odd glimpse of a whale in the distance or even a beluga fairly close but to snap the fin whale needed the zoom taken off and by the time I'd done that, it was back under the surface again and dived.

You know how excited I got over a couple of humpbacks. Well that was nothing compared to this. Even thought about scrapping the trip to Ottawa to go straight back out on the next boat. But sense prevailed (I think, or maybe not) and I got the bus anyway. Will have to get back to the coast again though - whales have definetly been the trip highlight so far, and will take some beating.