Whales!

When we moved to St. John's, we had one goal: see some whales.**
 This week, we totally accomplished our goal.

(there are no whales pictured in this picture, but there is a hilarious sign of a guy falling into a wave)

My parents have arrived, driving all the way from Saskatoon to St. John's in their camper van (you can read about their travels here). So we went out to Cape Spear with them on Wednesday and saw several humpback whales swimming off shore! 

It was amazing to see them, and so very exciting for Paul and I. Neither of us had ever seen whales in the wild before, and it was one of things we had been looking forward to about living on the ocean.

Today, we went one step further and took a boat tour from Bay Bulls NL to see both the puffins and the whales. We forgot our camera (boo!) but we did see both! Tons of puffins, who are very cute and, as someone described them to me, like little flying potatoes. Unlike some of the soaring sea birds (gulls, etc), puffins flapflapflap their wings like crazy. It seems like they are constantly panicking that they'll fall from the sky. The colours on their beaks are very cool and G was very, very impressed.

But, of course, nothing can compare to the whales. We watched two humpbacks surface and flip their tales at us from about 20 feet away. It was exhilarating to see such a big animal so close, and fantastic to watch G get very excited. While others were oohing and ahhing and asking questions about white markings and fins, G asked the most important question of all...

"What are their names?"

**Note: we actually had many goals.