This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

The weather today was the best ever! Every day so far, clouds have been hanging right over the mountains here and it has been windy. But today the mountains were completely free of clouds and the world’s second windiest harbor didn’t have any wind at all! It was a blue sky and it was just an awesome day here in Paradise.

The day didn’t start very well though. I woke up early because it was freezing cold in our room. I was half asleep and wasn’t really aware of what I was doing, but I took my hoodie and put my legs through the arms of the hoodie and pulled it up over my thighs. A very smart solution for a sleeping person. Then it got even colder so I removed it and put it on like normal, but then my legs were cold. So for tonight I’m taking both my hoodies out and am gonna put them on. I can’t believe how it can be so cold!

Anyway, after that we took the tour buses to the harbor in Ma’alaea, which is the second windiest harbor in the world. The tour was with Pacific Whale Foundation and was a very good tour. 2 hours out on the water under a blue sky and hot sun. The water under us was the bluest of blue I’ve ever seen. When I didn’t see any whales I just couldn’t stop looking down at the beautiful water. It was mesmerizing!

When it comes to the whales, the Humpback Whales, we saw a lot of them. They were seriously everywhere. Wherever you looked you could either see their backs breaching the water or see water blown out. And that you could see from very far away. They had a rule to not go closer to the whales than 100 yards except if they came up to the boat which they didn’t really do today. One time four of them came pretty close to the boat, but otherwise we watched them from afar. But they are big, like 45-50feet long so we saw them pretty good. The whole experience was just so amazing. We didn’t see any jumps close up but we did see some side fin splashes, a lot of tailfin splashes, and one head splash. They do that to get water in their mouths to look bigger and impress the females. So today we saw mostly males in competitive pods trying to win a females heart. We also saw a calf which probably wasn’t much older than just a few days, maybe weeks. It looked like a dolphin compared to the huge grownups.

It was incredible, but I so wish they had swam under the boat like they did the last Friday. That would have been soo awesome!!

After the whale watching we drove to Paia to hang around in the small and pretty city or just hang out at the beach for a couple of hours. I, Caroline and Sabrina (our new roomie) decided to spend those hours at the beach. The waves were really big today as well, and they were irregular. Fun for the surfers who could catch pretty much any wave.

At 4:30pm we drove back to the hostel where we had dinner, noodles in the microwave. It was good actually. At 7pm they opened a keg of beer and everyone was out in the common area playing drinking games, and just hanging out. I hardly drank anything, I tried Flip Cup and the Hands Game and I had a very nice time. And I’m so glad they have a quiet time after 10pm so I will still get some sleep :).

So, tomorrow’s the big volcano crater hike. It will probably kill me, but I really look forward to it. 12 miles is a lot though…

The baby humpback whale with its mom!