The Reynoldz

Well, we had a blast! That was a pretty nice 40th birthday present Anna gave me! The weather was great and the whales all complied with my wishes. (which means they didn't swim off as soon as I got near, and they didn't kill me either, which was nice of them). And by saying "we had a blast", I mostly mean me and the kids. Anna spent alot of energy getting us from place to place, making sure all the arrangements were in place, and taking care of three sickos. Haidyn and I had fevers (flu) the first few days there. Athea had lots of snot. Nothing meds couldn't fix. We had to take three flights to get to our resort. One from Wellington to Aukland, one from Aukland to the main island of Tonga (where the king was just buried), and then an old DC-3 (see pic) to get us to the Vava'u group of islands. Tonga is a very laid back, low-key bunch of islands. No Fiji 5-star hotels for us. The islands are covered in a dense tropical rainforest and a whole heck of alot of chickens, dogs, and pigs. The roosters started their "morning wake up call" around 1:00 am and pretty much kept at it till we all finally got out of bed around 7:00 am. We had a couple days of just getting the "hang" of it. Then I had three days (10:00 to 4:00) of going out on a boat to swim with whales. The boat would stop by our resort and grab me. We booked three days because Anna was told that not everyday is successful, so multiple runs may be required. But I had a good captain who seemed to be friends with everyone who owned a boat. So he always knew where the whales were. I got to swim with the mother's and calves each of the three days. On my first day, I got so excited, I jumped into the water without my fins on. Captain said I owed everyone a beer for that one. On my second day, I got quite a nice sunburn (oh I drive Anna crazy). What is so hard about putting sunscreen on?!? On the third day, we were following a whale, getting closer to where we had last seen it breaking the surface, when we clearly heard whale singing. Our captain smiled and told us that the whale we saw was most surely a male and was now resting deep in the water (where we could not see him), but we could jump in the water anyway to hear the singing better. It was awesome. We saw dophins and flying fish and some pretty amazing snorkling areas.

A friend at work had an underwater camera housing for my model of digital camera and he let me borrow it. Thanks Victor!

I never touched one of the whales, but got to within a couple yards of them.



Here is a picture of the girls keeping busy at the Tiki Bar at our resort. There were only around ten other people staying at our resort the whole time, so everyone got to know our girls. All the Tongan women loved Athea. They kept taking her from us to give her a "tour" of the resort, but really just wanted to hold her. She was a pretty good sport about it.


Here are my girls on one of the evenings where we had dinner on the beach. When asked what her favorite part of the trip had been, Haidyn's answer was "dancing on the beach". More Tonga blogging (with pictures) to come!