I Saw Dolphins Ian Didn't

vince says:

hey all the past few days have been pretty uneventful until today. This morning Aunt Yen Yee signed us up for some outrigger paddling, sorta like kayaking but with six people in a canoe. I would just like to say that we saw some pretty great stuff out there, plus the fact that I saw dolphins swimming next to our canoe, like just twenty feet away. They were grey on the top and pink below, and they started jumping out of the water! I saw two of them jump out of the water next to our outrigger canoe, and I couldn't believe my eyes. This was the sight of wild dolphins jumping out of the ocean - this was not Sea World or Sentosa Underwater World. This was wild dolphins jumping out of the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Who the hell else sees this kind of thing!? I felt very blessed that I saw this rare sight.

Ian didn't see this though, but what followed was a truly shared experience. Since both of us were in different canoes, he did not see dolphins. But we both heard the whales. My guide Daniel was telling us about King Kamehameha who united all the Hawaii islands through fighting and bloodshed, when suddenly he said "Oh look there're the whales". All five of us in the canoe turned our heads immediately towards where he was pointing, and true enough we saw the sprout of water shooting from just beneath the surface. Eagerly we peeled our eyes from more signs of the whales, hoping beyond hope that we could see the big mammals. And true enough, we were rewarded.

From deep beneath the surface of the water, a deep ethereal sound permeated through the body of water that distanced us from the whales. It surrounded us from all around. Below us something so special was happening. I can only try to describe it. A beautiful deep tone, followed by many squeaks and then the deep tone again. The whales were singing. From underwater, we heard the whale song. All of us stopped paddling, and we were astounded. There're no words to describe the wave of emotion that I felt when I heard the sounds of the whales. Ian later said that it was a haunting sound. I disagree. While the song may have been haunting and melancholic, it was undoubtedly the most beautiful thing I have been blessed to hear in my entire life. You cannot imagine how I felt when I heard them. Humans are so wrong to believe that they were the only intelligent beings. How could they say that! These people have definitely never heard a whale song. These huge beings sang and sang, and unwittingly touched the lives of the ten people above them that were so fortunate to hear their voices. Stephanie, the paddler behind me, could not stop gasping as she was so bowled over by the magnitude of beauty in their song. Truly, magic was off that island of Hawaii this very morning, in those waters that hid so much and yet gave us all a transcendental experience.

And the acrobatics began. Randal and Daniel, our two guides for respective canoes, agreed that that morning was one of the best of this year, if not the best. The whales, I thought there were two but Ian later clarified there were three, two fully grown adults and a child, started frolicking at the surface of the water. We spent the rest of the morning trying to chase all of them, but it was to be an easy task. The three whales keep leaping out of the water, and in one instance they were so close I could see the colour of the fins of the whale as they jumped out and entered the water. They could not have been thirty feet away. Again I must reiterate, the brevity of this moment had not escaped me. These were WILD WHALES IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN showing us their simple beauty. These whales put up the show of a lifetime for all of us out there that morning, but to them they were just playing in the water. It is peculiar how so little meant so much. I could not believe my eyes and ears the whole time.

These past three days I have been truly blessed to taste some of the greatest food (last night I had roasted potatoes and turkey breast and salad - AMAZING); eat to my hearts' content; and to experience the rarest most revered sights of my life. Suffice to say that I am physically and spiritually gratified.

I am happy.