Early start: whale watching. To Circular Quay, the port where the boat departs. It was a slightly smaller boat than expected, probably a rocky ride And indeed. Once out of the river, after half an hour of sailing, it starts to bob up and down quite a bit in the open sea: rolling, pitching, and yawing all at once. A+A start to feel a bit nauseous.
But there are the whales! Right from the estuary, we can see them. Several whales in various locations, admittedly quite a distance away. Spouting, showing their backs, raising a fin, or displaying their tails—we're all thrilled.
The best thing, of course, is a little jump out of the water. But they don't do that trick every minute. Apparently, the males do it to impress the females, but it takes a lot of energy to lift a body weighing around 25 tons.
This stretch of coast is called the Humpback Highway, because so many humpback whales migrate along it during this period. They travel thousands of kilometers each year. They respond to each other by emitting a low bellow, which can be heard by their own kind from dozens, hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of kilometers away.
Back to the boat. Taking photos of the spectacle wasn't easy; the boat bobbed up and down quite a bit in the sea. I did manage to capture some nice pictures and videos, though. I'll add some zoom-ins later.
Arthur and Adinda were slowly turning a little green, despite the strong Kwell pills. They only hung down briefly, the boat was a little more stable.
The return trip to the harbor was smoother, and we even saw a few big boys. Great trip!
Meet at the harbor:
On the boat, he's really putting in the effort. And you can tell. People are still laughing here.
Head out to sea in search of the big animals. The boat club even guarantees whale sightings during this time!
A fantastic sight. Even more whales in a different spot. With the last swat of their tails, we bid the animals farewell and sail back.
Later in the afternoon, it starts raining. You can already see the showers approaching at sea. A beautiful return route, past the cliffs, the lighthouse, the Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge, back to Circular Quay, the ferry hub.
Carmen has a tight itinerary planned for today. A quick lunch in the park, then on to Sea Life, a large marine aquarium in the heart of the city.
Not only viewing windows, but also very large pools where you can go down a level to look underneath and walk through the underwater tunnels.
There's too much to list: tropical fish and coral, like we saw on the Reef, manatees, sharks, penguins, jellyfish, manta rays, sea turtles. Everything that lives in and around Australia is gathered here.
The menu: Manatees (dujongs) eat only sea lettuce.
On to the sharks. At first it's funny, then it becomes Jaws! No joke, all those teeth!
Emperor penguins
And manta rays and turtles
And the dangerous homo sapiens:
That was Sea Life. Just in time, I went up Sydney Tower, one of the things on Carmen's Sydney bucket list.
The tower is 309 meters high, slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower. The observation deck is closed, behind glass. We just managed to look around for half an hour before it started raining, as predicted. Incidentally, it was the first daytime rain this vacation. From the tower, we saw a rainbow—no, a double rainbow—and Carmen even saw a 360-degree rainbow!
Food: hot pot, at a Chinese restaurant around the corner. Haha, everything around the corner is Chinese. Or Korean. They had everything: hot pot, dry pot, and all sorts of noodles and dumplings. We skipped the bullfrog and the fried brain, but there were plenty of other tasty options on the menu.
We had to look up a few things, like the lotus root (with the holes in it, tastes a bit like potato) and Arthur's dough ball with fish eggs. He had a lot of strange sausage in the soup, which he didn't like very much. Carmen and Lars had a dry pot together, which was delicious. Adinda had a noodle dish. It was challenging with slippery plastic chopsticks. Finally, the waitress brought a fork. That helped.
As promised, here are some more close-ups of the whales:
