The last time I went whale watching was off the coast of Maine circa 2003. I was 12 years old, there were 40-foot swells and I vomited into my mother’s favorite hat. Naturally, we didn’t see a single whale. Since then I’ve been a little cynical about whale watching specifically and boats in general. Sure, I dream about sailing the Mediterranean (I mean,who doesn’t?), but in the dream I am always sitting on the deck of a 20-foot sailboat in calm green-blue waters, watching the sun set over Corsica while sipping a glass of Chianti and eating fancy Italian olives. It’s a great dream, but in reality, I get seasick. Very seasick. I would sooner eat a tub of worms on dry land than an olive on a sailboat (and this is from someone who LOVES olives).

And so, in a fit of convoluted logic, I decided that what I wanted for my 23rd birthday, more than anything else, was to go whale watching. Here’s the thing–2013 has been a record year for anchovies in Monterey Bay. In fact, there are more anchovies in the bay this fall than any time in the past 40 years. More anchovies means more humpback whales. Lots and lots of humpback whales. In a normal season, the humpbacks would already be on their way to Mexico by now, but this is not a normal season. I wanted to see these whales and I wanted to see them badly enough that I was willing to pay money to get on a boat. On my birthday, no less.

I know what you’re thinking– this is going to be a total disaster and now I have to read a blog post about puking. But it wasn’t a disaster at all. In fact, it was great.

You guys aren’t going to believe this, but we actually saw whales. The hype is real–Monterey Bay is teeming with humpback whales. We saw 10-15 of these humongous marine mammals over a period of about an hour. (To be fair, it’s rather hard to tell them apart.)

We saw their huge, barnacled heads poke out of the water and felt their massive presence as they drifted by the boat, coming as close as 50 feet. A full-grown male humpback whale measures somewhere between 45-50 ft long and weighs up to 80,000 pounds so, trust me, 50 feet is plenty close. In fact, it’s completely impossible to describe how big these guys are. During the feeding season, they can eat up to two tons of anchovies in a single day. TWO TONS. That’s 16,000 quarter-pounders with cheese, to put it in perspective. Hefty as that seems, humpbacks need to pack on the blubber to survive a winter with limited food sources. When the anchovies run out, the whales will swim south to Baja where they will mate and enjoy slightly warmer waters. However, winters are rough on whales–deprived of anchovies, they can lose up to ONE THIRD of their body weight, making them, I think, the ideal mascot for Weight Watchers.

Considering their size, whales are extraordinarily elusive creatures. That’s why whale watching is such a thriving business. Seeing a whale is kind of a big deal. Mainly we saw tails and spouts. Humpbacks come up to breathe every five to seven minutes and they spout with impressive force. They take a couple breaths and then dive back down for another hundred-pound mouthful of anchovies. Yummy. Sometimes their tails flip into the air, causing 25 tourists to almost fall out of the boat in a frantic photographic scramble.

I would have been content with tails and the occasionally barnacly (that really should be a word) flipper–it was a beautiful, calm day on the bay and I didn’t even feel like vomiting. However, at the last moment, we got very, very lucky. As the boat was turning around and preparing to head back to the harbor, a 40-foot humpback shot out of the water about 100 feet off the front off the boat. This is called breaching and no one really knows why the whales do it–maybe they’re showing off or communicating or training for Olympic diving, but regardless, it is amazing. For a brief second, our whale was in the air, backlit by the late afternoon sun, his white belly gleaming with sunlight and water droplets. And then it was over. Neither Macky or I remember him landing. The splash must have been huge but our brains were still stuck on this image of a glowing whale flying out of the water as if shot from a cannon.

I can’t stop thinking about this whale. It is like I have a snapshot glued to the inside of my brain. What I don’t have is a snapshot on my camera because I was too busy peeling my jaw off the hull of the boat to even consider taking a picture, but maybe that’s for the best. Even if I had taken a picture, there is no way it would have captured this moment with any sort of accuracy (or, for that matter, focus). And if I had, through some sort of photographic miracle, managed a halfway decent shot, I would have felt the need to post the picture on facebook and twitter and instagram and this blog. I would have texted it to my parents and my best friends and people I haven’t spoken to in years. And then it would have been everyone’s whale. Now, it’s just my whale, my birthday whale, and I don’t have to share.

You, my friend, can enjoy some more whale tails:

What do you think? Are some travel experiences better left un-photographed?