WHALES!

We're in Maui until Saturday and then we head to Kauai. Unbeknownst to us, Maui is apparently one of the best vantage points to watch the annual whale migration that happens between November and April. Whole pods of whales are hanging out in the bay off west and south Maui--in the morning and evening, we've seen their spouts and the occasional roll of a smooth back or a fin. But tonight we had the most amazing experience. We were walking along the waterfront path in Wailea, where we're staying, and there were whale spouts going off all over the place, sometimes as close as a few hundred yards offshore. Then, out of nowhere, a mother whale breached and then began slapping her tail and dorsal fin on the water about 250 yards offshore. She slapped her tail about 15-20 times and then got started on her dorsal fin. That fin must have been 20 feet long. It was the most exciting, beautiful, incredibly moving thing to see--we felt so blessed and lucky to be there. Every so often, the baby whale would flash a fin or roll around near its mother. Everyone on the path stopped in their tracks to watch. Lunchboy managed to catch some of the action on camera, but in our exhausted haze on Sunday we forgot to pack the cord that connects the camera to the laptop (duh), so pictures will have to wait :( But then---lots of pictures.