Whale Watching

We spent the day in Victoria and went whale watching.  Nanaimo is a beautiful place if you are on the water and looking out, but the town is not much to see.  Seeing Victoria yesterday was breathtaking.  The architecture and view are amazing.  

We spent most of our time down by the wharf, and it was beautiful.  You can see in the background a building with white columns.  It used to be the head offices for CPRail, but it has now been turned into a Wax Museum.

We headed out on the Catamaran and the Skipper said it would be a 3-hour tour.  (I nearly jumped off, but I decided to trust them as there didn't appear to be a professor or anyone named Maryanne on the boat).  Our whole family took up half of the catamaran and rocked the boat every time we switched sides.  

It was fun to speed out to the open ocean and learn all about the marine life in the area.  We were fortunate to see a few Dall Dolphins who are very friendly and like to engage the boats and swim along side them.  We also saw a few hybrid porpoises (a mix between a Dalls porpoise and a Harbour porpoise).  It's neat because they haven't seen this mix anywhere else in the world.  They are a new phenomenon, so even the biologists are unsure if they have any fertility issues.  We headed out a little further to the coast of Washington State and were able to see a male transient Killer Whale.  

He spent a lot of time between the cluster of boats that were there to see him, but it was difficult to get a good photo.  That was the best part of the trip as Max was able to see the whale most easily.  

On our way back we stopped and saw some Harbour Seals.  The air was cool when the boat was in motion, but as soon as we were back into Victoria, we had to strip our layers as we were covered with our usual layer of sweat.  It was a long day, but a lot of fun.  We thought about having dinner in Victoria as well, but as we came back into Harbour, we saw two huge cruise lines coming in as well, and decided Victoria was about to get very busy.  We stopped in Duncan on the way home and had dinner at the White Spot and then it was home to bed.