World Cruise - Day 23 - Feb 4 - Nawiliwili, Kaua'i - Part 1

The sailing into Kaua’I was beautiful this morning, with some low hanging clouds on the horizon at sunrise.  I was able to get these photos with my new telephoto lens:

I took the photo above at full telephoto (300mm).  I took the photo below at the minimum for the lens (75mm) a few minutes later:

We saw some whales as we came into the port.  As usual, they were very difficult to photograph, but these were my best shots as they came up and spouted in the distance:

Different whale, similar pose:

Here is a close-up of the photo above (actually same photo, just cropped in tighter:

I know, it kinda looks like the Loch Ness Monster.  Trust me, it was a whale.

We passed by this lighthouse on our way into the harbor where we docked.

This is the view of the harbor and the second lighthouse at the point.

View of the harbor with the mountains in the background.  I love the color of the photo, although honestly I have no idea what I did exactly that caused that color saturation.  I’m still learning with my camera.

This was the view from our balcony while onboard the ship at port.  I know what Brandon would say: “I want to climb that mountain!”

We did a Bible study and video sermon by Randy Stiver in the morning.  Then we went to lunch and spent the afternoon at the Marriott Resort nearby our ship:

Beautiful beach, very relaxing day.  We were able to get situated where Krissie was mainly in the sun and I was mainly in the shade.  I kept moving her chair over when the shade began to encroach on her chair and moved my chair over next to her again.  Nice afternoon.  One of the locals who was playing volleyball thought that I was a local.  I guess my tan is doing OK.  He said I look like “Kalapaki Dave” from Kauai and that he had to do a double-take.  He said Krissie looks local as well, that she has a better tan than the locals (who are Hawaiian).

I talked to Emmanuelle today about her dolphin experience yesterday.  Good news is that when she got there, the dolphin place said she could swim with the dolphins.  Bad news is that she forgot her credit card.  It was a two hour bus ride there, so she wasn’t able to go back to the ship to get her credit card.  In addition, apparently there was a problem with a bus on the way back and it took even longer.  She said she was very sad about it yesterday and cried about it, but today she is fine.  She has such a positive attitude about everything.  She said she may try to arrange a dolphin swim in Cairns, Australia.  Apparently that is the first place along our path where she may have another opportunity.

We saw a LOT more whales as we sailed out from Kauai.  We saw probably 8-10 different pods of whales and each one appeared to have 3-5 whales.  I took a bunch of photos (over 300) and, as always, whales are very difficult to photograph.  But I did get some glimpses that I cropped down so you can see the actual whales (and dolphins), compliments of the new telephoto lens (arrived just in time):

I’m pretty sure that was a humpback whale.  We say lots of spouts all over the place, but it was still difficult to get a good photo above water.  I was waiting for a breach (full jump out of the water), but that’s rare.

We saw a group of spinner dolphins.  Way easier to get a pic of them jumping.  There are at least 8 in this photo, although I’m not sure if the one on the right is a dolphin or a whale.

This is my favorite dolphin photo, I got him in a full jump out of the water.

I got a shot of this dolphin as he jumped.  Reality is that I took about 50 photos of the dolphins (and another 250 of the whales) and just happened to get lucky with a couple of the photos of them in the air.

This whale was fairly close to the ship, about 100 yards away, coming straight at us.

And then he dove, I caught his tail up on the dive.

Spectacular scenery during our sailaway.

The clouds were majestic behind the volcanic mountains that rise out of the sea.

This photo was very far away, but I had to include it because it had three whales spouting all at the same time.

This is the closest I got to my breach photo.  I saw the whale breach, but by the time I snapped the photo, he was already landing.  And oh what a splash he made!  We were late to dinner because we were having so much fun watching the whales from our balcony.

The entertainment tonight a comedian, George Casey, lots of Irish humor:

We just got back from the Ultimate Deck Party up on the pool deck.  Lots of fun and more pics.  Have to do a part 2 due to file size, more to follow…