László Varga

Whale Watching Liguria is a program organized by the Genoa Aquarium. It is a tour of about 5 hours consisting of the “Delfini Metropolitani” (Metropolitan Dolphins) project on the open sea and a trip to Portofino (40 minute stop). The whole trip costs €32.00 and it is required to reserve a place in advance (www.whalewatchliguria.it).

The trip started out well, with the usual Italian 15 minute delay, we parted off from Porto Antico (from near the aquarium). The ship was a little overcrowded, but no matter, we have managed to find a place on the upper deck, so that we could all enjoy any sightings of dolphins. It was also a perfect place to take pictures of the scenery and to just enjoy the late-spring sunshine.

Immediately after we got out of the port, we saw an ocean sunfish (mola mola)… well its tail anyway. It is a very interesting fish… I saw it on pictures 😕 … An interesting particularity of it, as the tour guide said, it cannot be seen once it goes underwater… well… yes… very interesting…

After the thrilling encounter with the ocean sunfish, we continued our trip towards the open sea to search for dolphins/whales… and we continued… and we continued in zig-zag… and we continued… and we arrived in Portofino… 🙂 The tour guide said, that the name Portofino actually derives from Porto del Delfino (Dolphin Port), so we might just see dolphins in the entrance to the bay there… we didn’t.

Portofino was a thrilling sight in this beautiful sunny day. We had only little time to explore the peninsula a bit, but we used it to walk up to the light-tower of Portofino. The view was magnificent, I could see most of the coast… and all the yachts… and all the nice people on the yachts… by the way did I mention my zoom works excellent? 😛

We rushed back to the port (our little trip up on the cliffs to the lighthouse was a bit too long) and got back to the ship. On the trip back to Genova, our route was closer to the coast, so we could enjoy the coastline better backwards.

Oh, yeah… the dolphins… well we saw some… in the aquarium… 😛 . I have uploaded some picture to my Picasa account

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 10:45 pm and is filed under Italy, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.