Failed whale watching trip - February 2010

I planned this big whale watching trip for my birthday weekend and everything worked out as planned. Made reservations online, called before we drove out there to make sure they were still running the boats with the rainy/windy weather, picked up some friends, got to Newport Beach with plenty of time.


View Larger Map

It turned out to be a beautiful day with gorgeous clouds. We paid for our tickets and waited outside next to some other people who were waiting to board. At first, we wondered which boat was ours, but our tickets said Amigo so we waited by the boat with that name. After a while, we wondered why there weren't more people around. It was passed the time we were supposed to leave. So I went back inside to see what the hold up was and the teenage boy who had sold us the tickets said "Oh, well, the boat boards down at the end of the pier". We ran down to the end, but of course, it was too late and the boat was already gone.

Seriously!! I couldn't believe it. The guy never said when he sold us the tickets that we needed to go to a different boat waaay down at the end of the dock. I was really upset. It had taken a lot of time and effort to get it all set up and now that we had driven all the way down there, what were we going to do! To his credit, the manager at the dock where the boat had actually taken off was very nice and gave us some coupons for next time (half off the tickets plus free binocular rental) and we went back to the place where we'd gotten the tickets to get a refund. Then we ended up going to get some food at a bar happy hour nearby.

Still, I wanted to see some whales!! Hopefully we'll be able to reschedule for next weekend or something while the whales are still migrating.

I leave you with a few photos. Not whales, but we worked with what we had.

NOT our "Amigo"


Brown Pelican! (To celebrate them being removed from the endangered species list!)


Great clouds that day.

Comments