Rincon, Puerto Rico

From our own personal theme park, we moved onto Rincon for some whale watching. Poor maps and behaviour meant we arrived late, irritable and not in the mood to take a 50% chance of seeing whales with good grace.

Rincon is on the west coast of Puerto Rico, separated from the Dominican Republic by the Mona Passage. Whales migrate along the passage to and from the Silver Banks which are north of the DR between December and mid-March. We were heading for Samana Bay in the DR as soon as the weather and were using the opportunity of whale watching in Puerto Rico as a kind of insurance policy in case we couldn’t get to the DR in time.

We spent the first hour or so, utterly convinced that we wouldn’t see whales and that the trip was called whale watching on a very tenuous basis! But we did see whales – probably 2 or 3 travelling together. The boat was fast enough to be able to track their progress north towards Silver Banks: everyone kept a lookout for the telltale “blow” and we dashed it – staying a respectable distance away to ensure we didn’t disturb them. Although they “fluked” quite often, we really only got one representative picture because it was sunset – very beautiful but not something our camera can cope with.

Jamie was quite scared because, as you can see, the boat we were on was quite small and the whales are quite a bit bigger than it! She saw one of the whales with its mouth open showing its baleen plates quite clearly.

It was exciting and fun and really lifted our spirits. There’s the “thrill of the chase” when you’re with other people. But it’s quite a different feeling when you see a whale, or a dolphin, from your own boat: when that happens, there’s excitement but more of a sense of communication and the feeling that we’re not alone on the sea.