Our last and final day of our baby-free getaway began with waking up to clear blue sky with lots of sunshine! I had done a lot of our packing the night before so all we had to worry about was getting our butts out the door.
I had purchased previously a
Groupon for a 3 hour whale watching tour with Ucluelet's
Aquamarine Adventures. This event was the main reason why I had planned this whole time away, I knew Sevio had never been before and had expressed interest in the past. So I had arranged to go on the first tour of the day which began at 10am. We showed up a little bit early to get briefed and suited up and learned we were the only ones signed up so lucky for us we got a private tour!
We set sail on our zodiac and coasted our way out of the harbour, learning much about the history of the town of Ucluelet with all its fishing history as well as native history. Our first wildlife sighting was right under one of the big fisheries, a sealion, and not just any sealion, one that had one heck of a battle wound around its neck! The poor guy looked to be in rough shape, our tour guide said they really try to keep these guys out of the harbour because of the fisheries things like this happen frequently. Our next sighting were two deers on the rocky shoreline and just above them were three eagles perched up in a tree.
Once we made it out to open seas we almost immediately came across an island covered in another kind of sealion, as you can see in the picture there is one large one sitting up in the center...that's the male and the ones scattered around him are his lady friends, a harem so-to-speak. supposedly only one male will take up residence on a rock, I guess they're territorial of their land and their women.
After hitting some of the little islands just out of the harbour we made our way out to deeper seas towards whats called the "Broken Group," which consists of hundreds of little islands that are scattered in a bay between Ucluelet and Port Alberni. Our Guide heard over the radio that there was a Grey Whale in the area so we spent some time searching for it, but unfortunately we never found it. She showed us a couple caves among the "Broken Group" and then took us out to where another boat had a confirmed sighting of Humpback Whales. As we drew nearer we spotted them by their spray, which would shoot about two meters above water. There were two or three around the area, and they didn't do any fancy tricks but they showed us their humps and dorsal fins and a couple of times we saw their tails. It was pretty cool to see such huge animals that move in what seems slow motion, very graceful creatures for being tonnes upon tonnes of blubber.
Our tour was coming to an end so we headed back to the coast to scope out the shorelines in search of black bears, sadly we never saw one. We did see one more humpback and we did see a momma seal and her baby, it was SO cute, I wanted go right up and squeeze it! After that we made our way through the harbour again and said our goodbyes. Sadly that marked the end of our adventure apart from the drive home. We got home earlier than anticipated which was great because we were excited to reunite with our Smiley Rylee and give her three days of hugs and kisses.
