When the whales are out (Summer is the best)
For some reason "seeing Orcas" made my list of goals. With my recent hindsight I'm not so sure I was setting my goals quite high enough because this was just a step or two behind seeing the often unclassified type of Orca found at Sea World: the Captive Orca.
Our guide was a bit quirky, but he even admitted that he's not really good at spotting whales, but he's really good at spotting Whale Watch boats. We zipped across the Ocean or Strait (maybe) and parked ourselves in the midst of the pack and right there were 30-40 Orca just having a swim. It wasn't easy getting a good picture of these mammals, but with a patient eye, and a steady hand you could catch some amazing shots that would just make you wonder "how much training do those sea world people really have to do?"
I'm probably being a little hard on the whole experience. Mick was extremely knowledgeable and funny at the same time, and it was very clear that he didn't want to disrupt the path that the orca were heading, and it was really cool seeing all these giant killer whales swimming in the ocean........I guess it just wasn't as romanticized as my mind had dreamed up.