You wouldn't think it would be that hard to find a boat to take you to the top spot in Maui, but it depends on how particular you're being. We knew we needed to go on Sunday -- all the other mornings we had on Maui were filled with other plans. It turns out that Sunday is the day all the local dive operations have chosen to cater to more advanced divers. Every place we found going to Molokini was visiting the "back wall." That would mean diving near a vertigo-inducing sheer drop, something Jacob wasn't looking to revisit just yet after a past Cayman Island experience (and which I don't know that I was ready for either). It also would have meant doing a drift dive in a high current area, something I wasn't yet ready to face again. Drilling down into the smaller outfits, we'd found a boat willing to do Molokini, on Sunday, on our terms -- we were just asked to call and confirm with them when we arrived on Maui.
On the lazy day of our arrival, we did just that... only for the negotiating to begin. Nobody but us had signed up for the Sunday boat. Would we consider going Saturday instead? No, we couldn't do that; the sunrise bike ride was scheduled for that day. Oh... well, they would make it work or get back to us.
Saturday after the bike ride, they decided they couldn't. They told us they weren't willing to take just the two of us out, but that they would check around town and find us another dive shop we could join up with. After that call, we decided we didn't want to go anyway. Jacob had eaten some bad sushi at some point along the trip (just one of the many reasons raw fish doesn't appeal to me), and wasn't necessarily feeling up to a dive -- at least, certainly not when we'd just been handed a way to back out without still having to pay for it. So, no more Molokini. The afternoon after our bike ride, we set about finding a replacement activity.
With a few ideas in mind from our pre-trip research, we quickly settled on booking a whale watching tour. There are plenty of places in Maui that will do this too, but we opted for Ultimate Whale Watch, operating a small boat for no more than 18 passengers. A chance to get up close and personal, we hoped.
We set out from the harbor in Lahaina. Ours was their second whale watching trip of the day, and the first had successfully found a humpback whale a little over an hour ago. Since it was early December -- still early in humpback season for Hawaii -- our best chance would be to return to where that last humpback had been found. But hanging out in the area for about 20 minutes turned up nothing. Still, whales had a money-back guarantee on this trip, and the captain had another place to search.
We were on our way there when one of the passengers called out that he'd seen a spout just off to port. Our captain throttled back and settled into the area, reminding everyone that since a whale typically holds its breath for 15-20 minutes between dives (and can do so for as much as three times that), we might need to wait a bit for confirmation.
We waited about a minute and a half. We'd found a newborn humpback whale calf, less than a week old. Chances are, it hadn't even been born yet when we'd left Denver.
Of course, this newborn wasn't out here in the ocean on its own. Within a few minutes, the mother made its presence known.
But no matter what either of them did to look out for Junior, the kid had other ideas. We were probably his first close encounter with a boat, after all, and he was super curious. After about 10-15 minutes of trying to wrangle the kid, Mom finally gave up, having apparently decided we were no threat. She decided to let him do what he wanted. What he wanted was to take a closer look. A really close look.
He swam right under the stern of the boat, to the startled gasps of all aboard. Even the captain was surprised, and not quite sure what to do. On the one hand, he's supposed to stay 100 yards away from whales by law. On the other, this was hardly his fault. On the one hand, this was a two-hour cruise, with plenty of time to find other whales. On the other, we'd really just found this group, and were we likely to get a better show anywhere else? The captain decided to stay in the area, hoping that the male would come up for air before a big dive, show us his tail, and then allow us to leave having seen pretty much everything.
The male never did show us his tail. But Junior did, again and again. He was so young, his fins had not yet completely uncurled from being in his mother's womb. He was still learning, splashing around with his sort of half-tail, trying to emulate the adults. And he kept checking us out for the next half hour. Consequently, we got up close and personal with both Mom and the male at various points too.
If we'd stopped to ponder it for a moment, it might have been a bit unnerving being this close to these massive creatures in such a small boat. Even the newborn was as long as our vessel was wide. But it was just too cool!
When the captain asked if anyone on the boat had an underwater camera, we suddenly cursed having left the GoPro back in the car. It had never occurred to us we'd be this close. Still, it was hard to feel like we were missing out on much with our front-row seats. The co-captain of the boat, a cheery woman who actually spends her life moving between Alaska and Hawaii (moving with the whales), said this experience would probably ruin whale watching for all of us. (Maybe she was angling for a tip, but I'd say she and the captain had already earned it.)
After about 45 minutes watching this trio, our captain took pity on a no-doubt frazzled Mom, and left the whales to themselves. From there, it was a short and scenic ride back up the coast to the dock. Sure, we'd missed out on Molokini Crater. But it seemed safe to say that we'd substituted one great experience for another.
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