Close encounter of the marine kind

I checked the clock on my cell phone. 5.15. I sighed. Some guys were having a party outside my hut. I was nowhere near well rested. After a while, they stopped the party and went back to sleep. At least it got quiet. I slept a few more hours, and got up. Today, I had decided to try an ocean safari, where we could see humpback whales, and snorkle with whalesharks and rays. If we could find them. I arrived at 10.30, the designated time. There was a small group of Portugese people and an Italian girl going on the same boat. We fitted for flippers and got a set of well worn snorkelling gear. I was hoping we would get the chance to swim with the whaleshark, but I knew the chances where slim. There aren't many left. They are easily hunted, since they swin near the surface (they feed off zoo-plancton) and move slowly. And thus they have been hunted to near extinction. Which is sad. We loaded our gear on a stranded v-bottom high-speed boat. A tractor pushed the boat into the water, and then we all had to pull together to get it floating. First the girls got in, then the men. The captain fired up the two outboard motors and soon we were screaming and jumping across the waves. There were footstraps to prevent us from falling overboard. After about ten minutes, the captain slowed down and the lookout started searching for anything in the water. Suddenly one of the portugese women screamed and pointed. A humpback whale jumped up and crashed down in a giant splash on the horizon. The captain fired up the engines and we raced towards where the whale was. We arrived a minute or two later. The engines where switched off. And we waited. Then suddenly we heard the unmistakable whooshing sound of a whale blowing. I turned and saw the backs of two whales maybe 50 meters away. I tried holding my camera steady for the shot, but with 2-meter waves rocking the boat. I needed time before I perfected the technique of compensating. So the first images where out of focus and out of line with the whales.
The captain and the lookout moved us back and forth, chasing the whales, and trying to see if he could find the price, the whaleshark. Unfortunately, this day, it eluded us. Since we had all been sitting in the boat the whole time, the guide told us that we could get into the water above a coral reef. The water wasn't too clear, so he didn't know how much we could see, but at least we could try it out. He warned us of the strong currents. Laura, the Italian girl, touched the water with her feet and almost screamed. "It is sooo cold!" I smiled. "This is warm compared to the sea in the summer in Norway. So if you think this is cold, you would freeze to death in Norway." I said and jumped in. It was lovely. Laura jumped in beside me. She moaned. But put on her snorkelling equipment and started swimming. I didn't see much. I saw there was something below, but couldn't see what. Without glasses, and a bit unclear water, I was practically blind.
I swam around a bit, always checking every now and then to see that I was near the boat. Then at one point, I swam towards land. And after maybe a minute, I looked up and the boat was gone. I looked around and saw that the strong currents had puched me several hundred meters away in an instant. I spent a lot of time and energy to swim back. When I finally arrived back at the boat, it was time to go. We strapped down and screamed across the waves. On the way back, we stopped once more to see a humpback surfacing. We sat there quietly and watched for it to surface. Suddenly we heard it blow just beside the boat. I managed to get a few shots between the guys sitting on that side of the boat.
Then we were going back to shore. The captain stopped the boat a few hundred meters from the shore so the guide could prepare us for landing procedures. "We will ram the boat at full speed onto the beach. So you have to hold on tight both with footstraps and holding on to the side." I and Laura looked at eachother and smiled. "This will be interesting!" The driver hit the gas and accellerated to full speed. We surfed on a couple of waves and just before the beach, we were lifted high by a wave and crashed down on the beach and stopped in an instant. Then the boat tipped over to my side. "Get out! Quick!" the guide called out. We all got out, and walked towards the dive center. The guide brought all our stuff. I said bye to Laura and headed back to my hut. Had a shower and went to the restaurant for a delicious meal of fried barracuda and chips. Yummy!
The images today are, of course, of humpbacks. Sorry for the somewhat wavy nature of the images...