Whale watching at Hervey Bay

I woke up Saturday morning at 6:30am to get ready to head to campus and catch the bus to Hervey Bay. It was POURING rain. Absolutely miserable out, which made me a little nervous about the trip, but it is Australia and the weather usually clears up quickly.

As we loaded onto the bus we met Peter, our Scottish bus driver. He is the man. He was funny and completely entertaining. He explained that usually he wears a kilt for his trips, but someone stole his recently and his new one hadn't come in yet. We all slept for most of the 4 hours bus ride. We arrived in Gimpy for lunch, which was more like finger food. We scarfed down the mini sandwiches and then loaded back on the bus for the rest of the trip. We arrived in Hervey Bay around 1pm, quickly changed into our bathing suits and headed to the beach. We enjoyed some sun and met some new friends. It was perfectly relaxing.

After the beach we had our buffet dinner and then hit up some local pubs. We had to be up at 6am Sunday to go catch our boat so the plan was just a few drinks and then home early. Yea, that didn't happen. 6am was brutal, and after tryin to eat breakfast, I asked Peter for the key to the bus and went to lay down until everyone was done eating. A lil while later Peter came and gave me his pillow. What a sweetheart. By 8am I had had a little more sleep and was finally feeling better. Plus, it was whale watching time!!!!!
We loaded onto the Mikat and after headin out to sea, Jackie and I posted up at the front of the boat. I took another nap and somewhat remember Jackie saying "Are you asleep, cause there are whales." I sprung into action with my sweet camera. Quick shout out to the guy at Best Buy that convinced me to go with the Canon because it has continuous shot, meaning when you hold the button it keeps taking pictures. That allowed me to get some amazing shots. I got an awesome sunburn which is now just a beautiful tan too.
Now, the whales. I had some expectations. Like I hoped we'd get to see some whales and I could get close enough to get a picture I could then crop in closer. This exceeded all of those. Sometimes the whales were close enough that I could have reached out and almost touched it. And our captain was great and taught us a lot about them. We followed a mother and her calf for a while and he explained that the mom shoots milk out into the water for the baby to drink. And that whales come up to Hervey Bay to mate and have their young, and then once they are strong enough, they swim back down to Antartica to feed. After about 12 months, the babies are on their own. The adults can also hold their breath for about 40 minutes.

After a full day of whale watching, we loaded back on the bus to head back to Brisbane. While at dinner Peter told us an awesome story. Back in the day he did tours in Scotland. He had a group one time and when he saw one of the girls in the group he thought to himself, that is the perfect girl. They got to know each other during the tour and at the end he picked her up and said he wouldn't put her down until she agreed to marry him. After 11 days of knowing each other, he flew out to Australia and married her. 27 years later they're still happily married with 3 kids. Sunday was father's day here in Australia so we all wished Peter a happy father's day throughout the day. He also told us how excited he was that he got text messages and calls from all his kids. So dad, I know we already had father's day in America, but happy father's day to you too!!!

Only 3 short weeks until Spring Break!!!!!!