I spent ages trying to come up with a clever pun for today’s whale watching trip in Monterey, so far zip, as you can se from the title 🙁 We saw a raft of Californian seals, I kid you not a “raft” is a special collective pronoun for these guys when they cluster together and just hang out, fins up for temperature control. I expected we’d have to head a long way off shore to see the cetaceans (impressed?) but as it turned out we saw upwards of four humpback whales in not 40 feet of water and what appeared to be only couple of hundred yards off shore.

Our on board marine biologist went through some elementary whale behaviour and told us what to look out for but as t he whales themselves are upwards of 30 feet in length there weren’t any classic tail fluke shots unless they Intended to drill themselves into the ocean floor. Work it out, 30-35 food of whale on end diving in just 40 feet of water, Naah!

Ruth was made up as this was one of the thing on her bucket list. We’ve heard a number of people talk about their bucket lists since we’ve been I the US and this was one of Ruth’s. It sort of equates to 1001 things you or ought to do before you croak! This type of talk is not conducive considering the impending birthday on Tuesday.