Whale for Thanksgiving

Our second full day on the Peninsula Valdez, Thanksgiving Day and a day set aside for whale watching, the Southern Right Whales that are in the waters of the Golfo Nuevo this time of year raising the whale calfs. Our home base for 3 days, Puerto Piramides is the launch zone for all of the tours into the gulf. 2 hour trips that get you up close and personal. We scheduled a 4pm tour and decided to spend the morning trying to get a glimpse of a tail, fin, or hump from land as we were told possible from Punta Pardelas just south of town. After breakfast in our room we were in our car heading down gravel roads through sheep pastures following signs to mirador ballenas. We had the point to ourselves for a short while and had commanding views of a calm bay off of the gulf waters. Having only seen whales once in my life off the coast of Oregon as they migrated north, catching a brief glimse of a hump and a spout off in the distance with binoculars, I didn't know what to expect. This was quite different and got us all excited. Without much effort we could see several groups of whales in the bay, pairs momma and baby side by side, some were close enough to hear their exhales. Helen insisted that we get a closer look so we climbed down to a reef shelf above water due to low tide and got to see a couple whales rounding that point, less than 100 yards from us - we were getting very excited about the possibility of getting even closer on our boat tour. We hung out a while longer watching whales and watching tour boats watch whales and then headed back to town.
At 4pm we joined 47 other life jacket wearing tourists and boarded our boat and headed to the same area we had been earlier that day. The water had roughened up and I had some concern that we might not have the best conditions but it all worked out well! In the hour of viewing (not cruising) our boat captains pulled us along side 3 different sets of mom and baby whales. Other than a jump (which would have been spectacular), we saw it all, tails, fins, bellys, noses (do whales have noses?) and humps. And the sounds of the exhaling spouts and splashes from fins slapping the water was wonderful. Although our boat was full, we all had great views and Helen and I couldn't pull our cameras from our faces. I will be culling photos for a couple of days. The time flew by and rather quickly our captain told us to take our last shots before we headed back to port.
Back in our hotel we feasted on pizza for dinner and wished we were home with friends and family for Thanksgiving enjoying pie and a turkey leg - but the tail of whale would have to do.