This was our ship. Yes, those are slides. Mark went on them but I was having too much fun snorkeling! I was one of the last ones out of the water. Steph and Julia were THE last ones out!
We didn't take any pictures of us actually snorkeling. Not much to see but butts and fins and snorkel tubes sticking out of the water! We had inner tubes which were nice to start with but I ditched mine pretty quickly.
On the way back, grinning ear to ear, we had two more surprises for us. The first was that a pod of dolphins decided to escort us. This is the only picture we got but there were several, all playing in the wake of the boat. As a Californian, I've seen my share of dolphins, seals, and otters. But this experience blew me away.
And just when we thought our trip couldn't get any better, that we couldn't possibly see anything else more amazing than what we'd seen in the past few days, we found two whales breeching and waiving at us.
The captain didn't want to get too close out of respect for the whales, and Mark wasn't exactly traveling around with a telephoto lens, but he still grabbed this shot (above.) Probably a bigger testament to the experience is how enthralled all the humans were (below.)
Everyone was silent, besides cheers when the whales showed themselves to us. And at the end, when the whales waived, we all waived back.
And here we are, post snorkel cruise! Exhausted, but clearly happy and having a fantastic time!
As a finale, 2011 ended with one last sunset. I can't say 2011 was a good year, despite the fact that some really good things happened. But it was a full year, and one that, at the very least, we can say we ended with family, love, and a gorgeous sunset.
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