Whale watching at Samana Bay

Today early in the

morning we left for our first whale watching.

With us, Pablo, the son of our dear Spanish friend Anna.

The weather was not the best. Wind around 20 knots with breaking waves.

We were the first boat to go out. In fact every day many boats leave from Samana for Whale Watching which is the key attraction of this region of the Dominican Republic, especially in this season .

The first 2 hours ..... nothing happened. Then around 10 o'clock we saw the first whale watching boat reaching the ares and we decided to follow them.

One more hour and still nothing. Then all of a sudden we noticed about 1 mile in front of us the characteristic puff of water. A whale had emerged to breathe.

We full throttled our engines to reach our first Humpback Whale.

I immediately jumped into the water with my underwater camera while Vale kept the rudder under control, but unfortunately we lost the whale.

We than decided to join a large group of whale watching boats few miles away from us.

Once there I had my heart in my throat: a large group of humpback whales was precisely in the midst of the whale watching boats .

But we were struggling to get closer. It seemed that other boats did everything to keep us away. In fact, few minutes after the crews began gesticulating animatedly to us. We have not heard what they said, but the message was clear: "get out of here".

There is, as far as we know, no rule that forbade us to stay in that area with the our boat, but I fear the logic behind that behavior was: do you want to see whales ? Pay the ticket and come join us!

Our first and essential rule is to not only stay out of trouble, but from any perilous situations in general. So bar to the right and off to find "our"own whales .

However having realized that it was already lunch time, we decided that hunting on a full stomach would be continued under the best auspices. A beautiful " aglio, oglio and peperoncino " spaghetti reconciled us with the world and returned the right enthusiasm.

The results do not delayed.

Less than a mile away from us a whale began to jump. One, two , three, four times.

These are the moments when you want an offshore under your ass.

But mom whale waited for us. She was with her puppy, who according to Pablo's opinion was not than few weeks old.

They shared with us few minutes jumping and playing. Then, they are dove.

We remained few minutes in silence. Speechless Then we looked at each other and in unison we said: let's go back!