Up to this point all content has been a joint effort and represents both our voices, nearly equally. However, from this point on, we have made the stylistic decision to split the narrative in two, for reasons that will become clear.
We had a great day of fishing. We finally had some sun and warmth, we had a ton of whale sightings from the boat, and we finally turned our luck with the fishes.
Also, it was nice to have some time alone. Being grouped together on a small boat with a bunch of yoga sea life enthusiasts was surprisingly not as relaxing as it sounds. There was an inescapable undercurrent of competitiveness and fear of missing out: The Aussies were all nice enough, but the nature of being on a boat with 8 other people, where only 4 people could be in the water, meant 6 people were left out at any one time.
So it felt refreshing and restful to do something different by ourselves. However, when we got back to the island we heard the others’ glowing stories of their whale swims: apparently a mother and her calf were very much in the mood to interact with swimmers, and let all the groups get very close.
We were disappointed we missed out on that experience, but what could we do? We did have a nice swim with the whales our first day, and we had incredible luck throughout this trip with all other kinds of animals… we couldn’t be lucky all the time.
Perhaps you wouldn’t expect whale swimming to be stressful, but it is, in a way. You are in a boat for potentially hours looking for whales, and once you find them you have to tiptoe the noisy boat near them without scaring them off. Then you are pit against the 8 other people who also want to jump right in. Once you are in, you have a 100-200m dash to where the whales are.
The fishing was the right move, laid back, stress-free, no blokes. However, once we got back to the island we could tell that the other group had a great day with the whales. I ordered a beer, sat on a log outside the bar and tried to block out the increasingly annoying Aussie accents spouting superlatives like Old Faithful. Crikey. I was coming to terms with this being the last of about 60 days traveling- it was time to head back to the real world.
Then I saw them in the distance past the outrigger. Two whales hanging out just off the island.
Jesse and I have different ways of coping with disappointment. I tortured myself by listening to the others’ excited stories of their close whale encounters and looking at their pictures, all the while reminding myself what a wonderful day we had had fishing.
Jesse went to grab a Papao beer at the bar fale by himself.
I was showing our fishing pictures to one of the girls when all of a sudden Jesse comes running past, saying there was a whale in the channel…
“How far?”
100 meters.
“Oh cool, should I switch my lens to the zoom so I can take pictures from the beach?”
Not answering, he grabbed his snorkel gear from our fale, stripped down to his boxer briefs, and charged into the water and took off swimming.
In my mind I debated what I should do. On the one hand I was nice and dry and had already given back the warm wetsuit I had borrowed. On the flipside, I didn’t want Jesse to leave me behind, and I certainly didn’t want to miss out on another potential whale encounter. I thought there was no way we could actually meet this whale, but at least it was some exercise, and, you never know…
All those thoughts whipped through my brain in about 5 seconds as I hesitated on the beach. Then I turned and ran to our fale, changed into swimwear as fast as I could, grabbed my snorkel gear, and dashed into the water, at least 50 meters behind Jesse.
I swam as fast as I could, but had to constantly stop and reorient due to the currents and Jesse changing direction far ahead of me.
After some time I looked back to the beach a few hundred meters away and saw some of the staff staring at us on the beach. I looked out at Jesse, realizing I was only halfway to him, and called out, to tell him I was turning back. This is completely crazy, I thought, but I don’t want to leave Jesse in the middle of the channel alone.
Then I saw a spout and a whale back hump just behind him and I put my head down and kept going
Upon seeing the whales, I reacted. Last chance, I thought. What do you have to lose? I turned to the waitress, Betta, told her I saw a whale and asked if I could go swim out. Her face cracked the biggest Tongan smile ever as she said, “Yea sure”. She must have thought I was crazy, joking, or worst case scenario – would quickly turn around. I may have said 100 meters, but there is no way I believed they were that close. That metric system is confusing to Americans. Upon Betta’s incredulous approval, I sprinted to the room, grunted something to Jen, grabbed my snorkel gear, made the split second decision to not bring the go-pro as it would slow me down, shed my shorts and shirt, and sprinted back to the edge of the water. Tunnel vision. I got my gear on, lifted my head and saw the whales were still in the same spot. Bingo.
I wriggled into my flippers, pointed my body in the general vicinity of the whales, put my head down, and swam. The first few minutes were easy. Looking back, I guess I didn’t really know what to expect. In most interactions, the whales kind of just take off and they don’t want to hang out. I guess I figured that would be the case here, but I was hopeful that if I got out there fast enough, I would at least catch a fleeting glimpse. After a few minutes I popped my head up to scan the water. It took thirty seconds or so but I found the whales again. It seemed like they were moving away. I adjusted my course and redoubled my efforts. At least I was getting some exercise. I did this a few times, each time somehow spotting the whales through the swells. Each time moving further and further from shore.
By the fifth time time I popped up, I was quite exhausted, treading water to catch my breathe. By now I was really far out. After scanning for the whales for awhile I saw nothing. Then I heard yelling – I figured it was Jen calling me from the island, probably pointing out where the whales were. I thought to myself, I have no idea what you are saying or where you are pointing. People were nothing more than dots on the island, though I did see a number of dots congregating on the shore and surveying my progress.
After 20 or 30 minutes swimming, I was bobbing basically in the middle of the ocean, I had lost the whales. I was tired and dreading the long, slow slog back to shore.
Actually, I felt pretty stupid and very much alone sitting out there in the middle of the ocean quixotically searching for the whales that were probably miles away by now.
I thought I would never catch up but gradually I realized Jesse was swimming back towards me. As he reached me he seemed startled and we popped up.
Apparently he had no idea I was swimming out too, and he hadn’t seen the whales in the water yet but he knew they were close. “I think they went that way”, he pointed.
As soon as we put our heads down to swim in that direction I nearly jumped out of my skin – the mother whale was JUST beneath me, about 3 meters directly below.
As I turned back to plan the long swim home – I would backstroke to save energy – I caught sight of whale spray in my peripheral vision. The whales were off to the right between me and the shore. I had swum past them, or they me.
There were two whales, a baby and a mom, about a 5 minute swim away. Then inexplicably I saw a black snorkel bobbing on the swells followed by splashing heading my way. It was Jen. I was confused. I could not believe she followed me out there. What?!?! It felt great to see her. How did she even find me? It was awesome, I had a partner out there in the deep.
I told Jen that I had just seen the whales and that they were toward the shore a ways and pointed in that direction.
We started to swim and after about 5 seconds I noticed them. Directly under us.
Jesse hadn’t seen her yet, and I tried to grab him, but he noticed her himself first and I got to watch him nearly jump out of his skin too.
We floated and watched her as she watched us, her surprisingly normal-sized eye checking us out. We were so much closer than in our guided whale swims, because our guide had always pulled us back when were even twice as far away as we were now. We were one slight errant current away from actually touching the mother whale.
I froze. The mom and baby had found us. Perhaps they were following Jen all along? The mom was directly below us. Maybe a body length away. We were way closer than the organized whale swims. So close, that I worried if I tread water I would hit her with a flipper.
To put it in perspective, her pectoral fin is 12-15 feet long. Her fin is nearly two times my body length. At 79,000 pounds, if she moved suddenly, we could have been sucked under by water displacement, let alone be seriously injury if she hit one of us. I grabbed Jen’s hand and floated without moving.
We think she must have have found us a little curious, as we were not accompanied by a noisy boat, were not clad in the normal black wetsuit, and there were only 2 of us, but she seemed to approve. In fact, we know she must have sought us out as there is no way we would’ve found her splashing around on our own.
(underwater whale pics c/o my very talented friend, and fellow German-Korean, Rita Kluge from earlier the same day with the same whales, since we didn’t have a camera with us)
Looking into her eye, I could see the social intelligence, awareness of the situation, and mutual curiosity. The initial wave of panic faded slightly. She would effortlessly maneuver her body with gentle, inch-perfect movements so that she could keep her right eye on us as we slowly paddled back to a safer distance. Meanwhile the baby gained confidence and peaked out from behind mom. He would raise his head from behind her shoulder and then hide again.
Eventually the baby came around behind his mother to check us out too. She nosed him up to the surface, and he swam around us for awhile before nursing.
We continued to watch, amazed. It was serene, otherworldly.
At one point the mom lifted the baby to the surface on her nose, kind of like bouncing him in in the air. She was playing with him.
The whole thing was surreal. I felt like we were strangers on another planet, or in a dream.
After a little while, Betta (the waitress that told Jesse he could swim out) and Paki (one of the two whale guides), sent by a concerned Mark (owner of the resort), arrived in a kayak on the other side of the whales, who were floating just under the surface observing us.
We rushed to tell them not to run over the whales, and they were instantly amazed that we had found them and had been swimming with them all this while, and they forgot that they were supposed to be bringing us back in their excitement over seeing the whales themselves.
I’m not sure how long we were just watching each other, probably time slowed down, but it felt like hours.
After playing with the baby for awhile, the mom positioned her nose toward the surface with her tail toward the deep. The baby quickly understood and began nursing.
Completely still, seemingly in suspended animation, a baby whale was nursing twenty feet in front of us. I will never forget that image…
Eventually, we took up Betta and Paki’s offer of rowing us back to shore. It may be my imagination but the whales seemed disappointed to see us go.
With 3 people rowing (and one kicking with flippers behind), it went a lot faster then the way there, but it still took a surprisingly long time to get back to the beach. All told (and based on estimates on google earth), I think we swam about 1 km to get to the whale.
Mark and Fili were upset with us, and we apologized profusely. We felt terrible making them worry, but at the same time I selfishly felt no regret – it was one of the most special experiences of my life, and I think even more so because we did it on our own power and got to experience it just the 2 of us.
I guess we had caused enough concern back on shore that a “rescue kayak” was launched. It took Paki and Betta a while to paddle out to us, but when they got there, they forgot to “rescue us” and were mesmerized by the two whales as well.
Maybe 5-10 minutes later we decided we should get started on our return trip as it was getting darker out. Back on shore people had been pretty worried. The Tongan whale guides, Paki and Fili, tried to be stern but their facades cracked. They gave in and just ended up shaking their heads, smiling.
They may still be talking about the crazy Americans who swam out to sea and hung out with the humpbacks.
Back on the beach we watched as the baby, perhaps invigorated by his close encounter with us, began repeatedly breaching – jumping out of the water – over and over again, as the sun set.
Mark (the owner) was tougher to crack. He went on about sharks and it being their feeding hour. I claimed our crazy American cowboy nature got the best of us, and in the end he couldn’t help reluctantly smiling about it too.
Meanwhile, in the distance, the mother and baby began breaching. Perhaps they were saying goodbye, or more likely, they had an itch. Either way it was an appropriate send off.
But wait – this nearly perfect day gets even better. Jesse, knowing how to capitalize on some pretty great momentum, chose the last night of our trip to propose… Sorry, no play-by-play on this part! Suffice it to say, it was simple, romantic, and I obviously said yes.
On our travels I’ve noticed that Americans (and Aussies) tend to overuse superlatives – everything is amazing, incredible, unreal. But this day REALLY was all those things. It’s a cliche to say, but truly the best day of my life.
I’m not sure if I have described this well or if anyone could, but it was a transcendent experience. It was like nothing I had ever done or probably will do again. But it was something I shared with Jen.
I knew Jen was pretty much perfect for me – I had 60 days of proof. Truthfully, I hadn’t planned to propose on the trip (that would be cliche? and it would’ve been stupid to bring a ring to the Congo) but after this crazy final day of this wild adventure – I knew we wouldn’t be sleeping that night and I couldn’t resist. She said yes.
I still can’t believe she followed me out to sea.
“But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey? Nothing, you say? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men! Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?”
– Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
round the world in sixty days 
Lovely. Awesome. Sometimes the end really is a beautiful beginning in disguise. Thank you SO much for sharing your incredible, exhilarating journey,
Jen, guess you got your big fish. Jesse, no more crazy sprints out to sea. . .
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