DAY 28 – WHALE SHARKS

The whale sharks, neither a whale nor a shark, were in splendid form today. We were the oldies in a young athletic group and were therefore at somewhat of a disadvantage in the whale shark viewing procedure but we saw our share.

The procedure is that the crew, with the assistance of a spotter plane locates a whale shark. The boat is then positioned in the anticipated path of the whale shark, everybody is lined up on the duck board of the boat and, when the crew shouts “go,go,go” you jump into the water and follow the directions of the leader who positions you so that the whale shark swims past you. That’s the easy part. Once the whale shark swims past, you then swim as fast as you can to stay alongside it for as long as you can. Needless to say the oldest and weakest drop off first and you are then left bobbing around in the middle of the ocean until the boat comes along and picks you up. It is definitely adventure tourism but very exhilarating.

There is a rule that you must stay 3 metres from the whale shark as it swims past but the one in the photo didn’t know about that rule. He turned and swam towards me. Yes it is my photo and what a privilege it was to be so close to such a magnificent creature, estimated to be seven metres long.

We were very fortunate with the weather. It could not have been calmer.

That’s one item we can tick off the bucket list.

The locals are very cheeky.