After 47 hours of travel, watching sunrise from a small 17-seater plane as I finally arrived in Tonga early Friday morning was an inspiring experience.
I spent the entire day saying hi to friends and getting organised, then collapsed at about 8:00pm, sleeping like a rock for over 12 hours...the first full night of sleep I've had in about a week.
It rained last night, but the skies are clear this morning, though there's a bit of wind picking up. Given my state of utter exhaustion, I decided to take an extra day of rest before hitting the water.
Two of my friends have been here for just under a week. It appears that no one has spotted any baby whales yet. Odd...by this time last year, I had found several, though as I recall, when I first arrived, everyone told me the same thing...that no one had seen any babies yet.
They haven't seen any whales with all-white pectoral fins either yet. I'm keen to see if there are as many this year as there were last season.
Tomorrow, my quest begins.