Orcas!!!

While the road North is still iced up, I'm staying around the South West of Alaska especially the Kenai Peninsula.

I've only ever seen Orcas in the distance before, so I hopped on the boat into Kenai Fjords National Park from Seward and hoped for the best. Apparently the best times to see them in this area are between 5th May and 5th June! Being highly intelligent, presumably they all share a Google calendar to get the timing consistent.

It is a fair way out into the park, the whole trip is a 6 hour day. Fortunately it was a smooth day, otherwise I would have struggled to enjoy it at all.

As it was we were surrounded by whales right from the beginning. The only real disappointment was that the boat was very full of tourists. It was difficult to get good shots of the wildlife without hitting  a tourist with my big lens. Having the biggest lens on the boat had its advantages. Some were very helpful and got out of the way when they saw me coming. One guy even wanted a photo of himself posing with it.

This large bull Orca came straight over to check us out. He very quickly got too close for my big lens.

I've still yet to see either an Orca or a whale breach.

We also saw all the other stuff you generally see in this area: humpbacks, mountains goats, bears, porpoises, otters and glaciers.