thar she blows!!

instead of going to the zoo to look at caged up animals, mummy and i decided to go somewhere we could see animals in the wild...

 u know, in their natural habitat kinda thingy..

 

somewhere we could get close to the animals, and take tons of pictures for keepsake and to show abah back home and at the same time not get eaten alive..

so we went WHALE WATCHING along the Gold Coast shore!!!

one word: breathtaking =)

the marina we boarded our whale watching vessel..

the gold coast shoreline..

this picture was taken with mummy's Sony NEX-3 aka her new toy..

it has a panorama setting which takes giler awesome photos..

dolphins!!!

this pic was taken by mummy, and that's me pointing..

2 dolphins came and swam by our vessel..

but sadly they didn't jump out of the water like what we see in movies =(

the only "action" we got from the dolphins..

fyi, these whale watching tours are not planned..

the whales were not paid to make an appearance like the killer whales in seaworld..

they pop out of the water wherever and whenever they want..

so, us humans had to look out for signs of them...

one of the signs was this bird:

bird's eye view..

basically this bird looks down at the waters for the whales..

why exactly it does that i dah lupa, huahahaha.. tuh lar, masa orang tuh explain sibuk duk belek2 camera.. kan dah tak dengar important info..

the other sign is by looking for the blow from the whale..

u guys know kan that whales are mammals, so occasionally they need to go up to the surface for O2..

so we were looking around for something like this:

like i said, it wasn't planned, so it took some time til the whales were spotted..

and these whales don't come up and dance in front of us for hours..

they come up to the surface, releases CO2, inhales O2, and within seconds they go back down for a dive..

so kalau dah nampak their blow tuh, jangan lar nak duk berganjak from where you are, coz by the time u actually settle down to take pictures, the whale would've been gone already..

muka dah mula rimas sebab tak jumpa2 whale lagi..

as spotting the whales wasn't easy peasy, the captain of the vessel offered a bottle of champagne to the person who managed to locate a whale first..

so naturally everybody lar was shouting here and there kononnya they've spotted the whales first..

so after many false alarms, the captain finally located a few whales, and then we we're off to tag along the trails of these whales..

2 whales surfacing side by side..

next thing we knew, we were surrounded by whales!!!

but they did not appear at the same time, so kena budget2 lar where they will appear next..

whales in the sun!!

see the guys on the jet skis, they we're there to make sure our vessel wasn't too close to the whales..

there's a law stating that any vessel isn't allowed within 100m radius to these whales..

that's the whale's head..

gone down for yet another dive..

a goodbye wave..

this is the actual view of how close we we're:

but sometimes, the whales we're closer..

and thanks a bunch to my 35-300mm lens i managed to capture decent shots..

oh, and guess what??

i shot in total manual!!!!!!!!!

i cranked up the shutter to 1/1250 and set the aperture to F5.6, set cammy in continuous mode, and snapped... snapped a lot...

nasib baik lar sekarang zaman digital, try imagine having to shoot 473 shots in film!! berapa kali kena tukar film?? arghhh..

meet the japanese john lennon...

mummy was so intrigued by this lady, everybody on the boat was busy running all over to have a look at the whales, and all she did was run all over the boat to find a place to sleep!!

souvenir wajib semua tourist..