Whales and Paintings

"Last week a blue whale passed through here... More or less 30 meters..." said the skipper of our boat. At once I started imagining how it would be to be near the largest animal on planet Earth. Whales have always fascinated me. First I was a bit afraid of them, maybe because of the "Moby Dick" series I used to watch, but afterwards I began to get fascinated with them, as I understood that these gigantic animals are apparently docile, and they want nothing more than to follow their own way. When I got to the Faial island, in the Azores, it was, therefore, natural that the only thing going through my mind was the moment I would go aboard one of the several whale watching boats that leave Horta harbor daily.

These boats normally do two trips a day, one during the morning, another during the afternoon, but it's best to make reservations for the trip as soon as we get to the island because if the weather is not good enough (and we never know how it will be in the Azores), the boats won't leave the harbor. If we have reservations, we get warned previously about the weather and we can go on the following trip.

Me and my traveling companions reserved one of the morning trips, and we would have to wake up by sunrise. As I woke up I went to the balcony of my room to check on the weather. I was gifted with a soft breeze and with the beautiful silhouette of the Pico island, on the other side of the canal, lit by the soft light of dawn, and cut against a magnificent violet-hued sky. Everything was in place for a memorable trip.

Nowadays whale watching trips rely on much of the experience acquired through several decades of whale hunting (which is now forbidden). The watch towers that used to direct the whalers to the location of the animals are now used to guide the whale watching boats, in order to allow the visitors to be side by side with these Azores icons. That's how the skippers know where to take the boats and where to look for the animals.

Even with these directions, and after we arrived to a spot where some whales were supposed to be, near Pico island, I was looking in all directions and all I was seeing was the ocean. We stopped a few seconds until the skipper's trained eyes spotted something. I looked at the direction he was pointing and still saw nothing, until suddenly I noticed a small cloud rising from the sea. A whale had just surfaced to breathe. We got as close as the safety rules allow and we noticed the gray body of a sperm whale gliding in the waves. "This one must be around 12 meters. Not bad but you should have been here last week..." said the skipper, used to measuring the animals with just his eyes. For me, the size was irrelevant. What mattered was that for the first time I had the chance of seeing in its natural habitat one of the animals I always admired.
"Gonna dive !!!" cried the skipper. And like a tamed animal, the whale vanished, leaving in the surface only its tail fin, in one of the images that has become a trademark in the Azores postcards. We waited for some time until it came back, we took some photos, and it disappeared in the depths of the ocean.

After the morning emotions we returned to the town of Horta. Having nothing to do in the afternoon I decided to go for a stroll in the marina. I have been in several harbors and marinas in several places of the world, but the Horta marina has an atmosphere that is hard to find in other places. It's one of the only places to stop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which means it's a mandatory resting place for crews of boats of all types from all over the world, from scientific research vessels, to sailing yachts in transatlantic voyages. It's common to walk around the marina and to meet people from all over the world, some resting, some taking care of their boats, others keeping the tradition of leaving a painting on the walls or pavement of the marina.

No one knows how this tradition started but it's told that it began with the superstition that the crew that did not leave their drawing in the marina, would not return from the next trip. And now, looking at the hundreds of drawings and paintings in the concrete, it's easy to understand why sailors are said to be superstitious. Some leave maps with the trip they are making, others leave birds or cartoon-like paintings, and others just leave their names, but all say that they were there at least one time.

After walking for a while I chose a spot, put down my backpack, and sat on the painted wall. The early summer sun was heating my skin just enough to balance the cool sea breeze. I picked up a book, lied down on the wall and started to read. As I read a printed story, I could not stop thinking about the images in the marina and the thousands of unprinted, maybe even untold stories they represented. Stories of voyages around the world, of faraway places and different cultures, and, who knows, maybe even some stories of encounters with blue whales.