Today we booked an excursion for tonight to “Snorkel with the Manta Rays!!!!!”  We were both pretty excited about this venture.  We went on a short hike in the morning and then prepared for our great escapade.

At the appointed time we donned our bathing suits, gathered our snorkel gear and headed for the Bite Me Sport Fishing and Water Adventures establishment where we were fitted for wetsuits. We then boarded the boat with ten other passengers, David – our cruise director, and Captain James.

We headed off for a spot about 45 minutes away just at dusk.  The passengers all introduced themselves and we chatted for a bit. Several of us spotted a whale blows in the distance – that’s when they come to the surface to breath and blow to clear the water out of their blowholes first. We gathered on the foredeck to watch.  After a bit we saw one very near. The captain stopped so that we could watch and we saw it blow again and then glide slowly up into view and down again – very, very cool.  It surfaced couple times more and then evidently moved on and so did we. 

I got chilly so I went to the aft deck to get out of the wind. I was back there alone just sitting on a bench and watching the water when a huge grey whale breached right in front of me! He came clear up out of the water and spiraled in a perfect arc and back into the water. I just started yelling to the others, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! Did you see that?!!!!!”  It was spectacular! He blew once more and then was gone. It was sooo awesome!!!!! It happened so fast that I didn’t get a picture, but found one of exactly what I saw. So here it is..

We also got to watch a beautiful sunset as we motored our way to the site.

That was the happy ending part of our adventure.  The rest is very anticlimactic… heavy sigh… We continued on to the Manta Watching site donned our gear and jumped into the water.  There were about 15 other boats loaded with snorkelers and scuba divers all doing the same thing.

Bright lights were turned on both on the surface and at the bottom of the bay.

These attract the plankton which in turn attracts the manta rays. It was a pretty cool sight.

This is what we were supposed to see –  

Unfortunately, the manta weren’t interested or made other plans, because they just didn’t show up – very disappointing to all. After about an hour in the very chilly water, we climbed back in the boat and headed for the marina.

I look at it this way, we were going to spend the money to go on a whale watching expedition, this took care of that. I would still like to see then mantas, but we’ll do that another time.