Tonga, what a fantastic place!  I just can’t express in my little post here what it is like being in the water, next to, such intelligent and graceful creatures as the humpback whales that winter in this area.

Since my time to update is so brief and the internet connections here can be very slow (I hope this post uploads and doesn’t keep me up too late...) anyway, I think I’ll let these few photos of *Little Vanilla* tell her story.  Oh, in case you are wondering, the name “Vanilla” came from something yummy at an Italian Restaurant here in Neiafu, Vava’u, that served us the best Vanilla Gelato I’ve ever had!  It is a fav of Tony Wu’s, our photographic trip leader; I guess the owner makes it special for Tony when he comes to Tonga.  So it was a natural choice for the next new whale calf we saw, “Gelato” if is was a boy and “Vanilla” if a girl humpback calf.

Here “Vanilla” is coming up for a breath of air, but, I wondered if her frequent trips to the surface were just as much to take a *peek* as take a breath? ;-)

To say “Vanilla” is cute is definitely an understatement!  Yes, I was certainly surprised when she chose to take a breath so close to me!  And for those who know fisheye lenses, this was taken with the Tokina 10-17FE, so you know she came really close to check me out!  Did she think camera dome was an eye?  I don’t know, but I do know that I had the lens set on 17mm and I gave my left hand the order to zoom out towards 10mm (but I don’t even think that would have been enough) still, somehow, upon gazing into her eye my hand froze and never moved the zoom gear!  What happened?  I think I’ll just chalk it up to “Vanilla Love” and leave it at that.

I’ll try to update more as I will be here in Vava’u for a bit longer.  But, with slow internet and a busy whale schedule, most updates will have to wait till I get back to the states I think.  I do hope the color of these photographs posts OK.  The color of the water in Vava’u is nothing sort of a stunning combination of azure and cobalt blue - I’ve never seen anything like it!  Sometimes my laptop computer and subsequent JPEG conversions for the web, don’t represent the real blues; I may have to check the colors in this post once I get back to my home computer monitor.  I want the water to look as close to what we actually saw as possible.

By for now, more whales tomorrow! :-)  Carol