Humpbacks and Boobies

Thursday This morning we had reservations to go out on a boat tour, guaranteed to see whales.  I was a bit unnerved to see that we had to wade out to the boat to get on board, but it turned out that it was only calf deep, so no danger of the cameras getting wet.  It took about a half hour of pretty fast motoring to get out to where the whales were hanging around.  It was really exciting when we saw the first spout and the humpback breached.

  We both took a lot of photos, and we each got one terrific shot;  a whale in front of one of the other boats, and a fluke. After about an hour or so of chasing whales, we turned around and zoomed back toward Puerto Lopez.

The captain drove the boat right up to a rocky cliff, and pointed out all the blue-footed boobies on the rock.  There were thousands of them!  I must have taken 100 shots.  A few are framable.  A few people on our boat went snorkeling, but not us.  It turned out to be a very nice tour.  The people were great, and we met a girl who is in the Peace Corps here in Ecuador.  Her name was Nickie and we saw her again at the hot dog place for dinner. When we got back to the hostel we asked for a blanket.  The guy brought us a quilt and we slept so much better. Don't know why we were too stupid to not ask them for one the night before.