Today we woke up to gray skies. The weather forecast was for 11 foot seas at 8 second intervals and 25 knots of wind. We were supposed to go whale watching and we were wondering if it was such a good plan. We had been told that the whales head out of Vava’u when the weather is bad, returning when it is better. We also have been told the whales leave during the full moon.
Tonga and Niue both are visited every winter by humpback whales that come here to mate and bear their young. Both countries allow you to swim with the whales when you go with a licensed professional whale watch company. Both Niue and Tonga strictly prohibit boaters from chasing after the whales themselves. In Niue it is easy to control the boaters since there are so few visitors, but much harder here in Tonga. Since we haven’t had any luck seeing whales on our own, we decided to go out with the professionals. We would have done it in Niue, but they weren’t seeing any whales while we were there.
Our whale watch boat picked us up from Kosmos. We headed through the maze of islands towards the sea. Here we are leaving Neiafu harbor. You can see all the big commercial buildings along the waterfront in the background.
