Puerto Vallarta Yacht Club: Whale Watching and Fishing

On Wednesday of our trip, Paul decided to charter a boat so we could go fishing and whale watching. Charley was super excited about the trip because we were going deep sea fishing for marlins and the pamphlet we found at the hotel had photos of people holding huge fish after very successful trips to the ocean. We went to the Puerto Vallarta Yacht club to meet up with our captain and board the boat:

Charley, studying the pamphlet:

Our boat, the Nicole, was large (but not too large). I usually don’t do well on boats, or any moving vehicles, but decided to tag along because I figured the waters couldn’t be that choppy. Me, before I realized I had made a huge mistake:

We headed out to sea and I was already feeling a little queasy but I couldn’t really ask to turn the boat around (that would’ve been too embarrassing, right?) The last time I was on a boat was for work and we did a cruise around lower Manhattan. I really didn’t want to go but it was a team event so I boarded the boat and sat in the exact same spot looking at the horizon until they allowed us to get off the boat an hour later.

We were having a good time on the boat and I even went and sat by the captain so I could see exactly where he was going (sometimes it helps when I sit shotgun so I can see exactly where we’re going in cabs so I figured it would be the same for a boat). When I went downstairs to sit with Ken, I immediately knew that I couldn’t handle sitting on the boat anymore (but there was absolutely no where to go since we were about an hour away from shore). I usually feel nauseous but nothing happens, but I couldn’t handle the seas that day and ended up throwing up off the side of the boat. Ken said I threw up a lot of papaya (that’s what happens when there’s unlimited papaya at the resort) and lots of pico de gallo (there was pico de gallo right outside our door that was sooooo good going down, not so good coming back up).

After clearing my stomach, I felt a little better but couldn’t get the energy to fish. Luckily, the captain sighted a lot of whales that day and we did a two for one – whale watching and fishing!

We saw at least 12 whales that day – lots of whale tails like this one:

But I did see one whale jump on its belly (I couldn’t even focus my camera that day so most of the shots are of whale tails!)

The experience is pretty surreal – I thought we were getting super close to the whale (of course we were a safe distance away so we weren’t disturbing them but it still seemed dangerously close):

Speaking of dangerously close, there was a whale boat that we were going to ride the next day so we could do a full day of whale watching; basically it’s an inflatable life boat that takes you super close to the whales because a helicopter looks for whales while communicating with the boat captain. Here it is:

The entire boat was screaming when they saw the whale because it was SO close — we decided seeing the whales from a safe distance was good enough for us and didn’t end up going on the second whale tour!

Charley ended up catching two fish that day, but nothing that was large enough for us to take back to the resort to have the chef cook for the family for dinner. Instead, we had a great dinner on the resort with the entire family. It was a really fun day!