You might have thought that we would have had enough of whale watching by now but it seems not: maybe it's like the scratch card gamblers we've just been watching at South Station in Boston whilst waiting to board our train to New York (yes, we're using a train journey to catch up on blog writing again) - activity reinforced by random reward?

So Friday saw us heading off to the far tip of Cape Cod to take the Dolphin Fleet whale watching tour from Provincetown. We strolled around the touristy town for a while enjoying browsing and window shopping in the sometimes stylish shops. The town is very evidently a strong Cape Cod gay community, it has a bit if a feel of Sitges in Spain where the gay community definitely adds a certain stylishness. We had coffee and shared an 'Almond Sea Turtle' at Purple Feather cafe that described itself as offering coffee and treatery. The Sea Turtle was a large chocolate covered caramel with almonds: delicious and chewy but half was plenty. The weather was grey but during the morning dry and with some light low in the sky and Jill managed to snap the odd moody scene in the harbour before it started to rain...... So another lunch eaten sitting in the car, whatever is becoming of us?! Then on with the warm clothing and full waterproofs ready for the boat trip.

Dolphin Fleet was decidedly our largest whale watch operator of the trip and we were glad to find that the boat was far from at full capacity. Finding a dry seat outside was a bit of a challenge - there was room inside but inside boats and Jill don't mix well. Then off out of the harbour at a reasonably high speed on the journey to Stellwagan Bank National Marine Sanctuary where the whales congregate to feed. We passed three lighthouses on the way, each one viewed through a slightly increasing fog of drizzle so no good photo opportunities there. We soon reached Minke Whale 'town' - well it seemed like that - Minke Whales all around the boat, some in pairs but most singly. These are not the most tourist friendly of the whale species we've met but it was great to see so many. Their typical feeding behaviour is to come to the surface blowing (the 'blow' much less obvious than that of other whales we have seen), swoop across the surface a couple of times with their dorsal fin just breaking the water, then arch a little higher to dive down again to feed. We could never be quite certain where any particular whale would surface again once they had dived down but there were so many we knew there would be another one along in a moment. On this trip the zoom lens was the solution to getting the odd decent photo and Dave has one or two to post. Jill's photos are mostly of a black dot that only we know is the dorsal fin of a Minke in the distance surrounded by grey sea and sky, and sadly often not in focus as the camera had focused on the rain falling on the sea closer to the boat.

However the return journey offered a reversal in photo success. The boat slowed to allow us to watch a huge Sun Fish swim slowly passed right by the boat and Jill was well placed to photograph this weird fish. The ship's guide said that Sun Fish are the largest fish in the sea and that they eat jellyfish primarily. They are quite unusual in that they don't have a tail of any sort, indeed they look just as though a shark has bitten off their back half. The rain had eased off as we made the journey back into Provincetown so we decided that we should try to get closer to one of the lighthouses we'd seen from the boat. We abandoned the first attempt as this required us to walk across a mile long huge boulder breakwater and Jill's eyesight had gone a bit odd from looking through the camera viewfinder and she felt too unstable for this challenge. So on to the next lighthouse across sand dunes. This too couldn't be reached as it was across a river estuary from our chosen beach but we enjoyed the fresh air and stretching our legs after being on the boat.

We'd planned dinner, again taking advice from TripAdvisor, at Karoo a South African restaurant. You might have thought here on the seaport end of Cape Cod that we should seek out a seafood restaurant and maybe we should have done but the research suggested that they were very pricey even for the sort of lobster shack experience that we'd had so cheaply in Grand Manan and Campobello. Our choice turned out to be great, including lovely cocktails and spicy interesting food. Dave was driving so opted for a cocktail with a reduced alcohol content and extra soda but Jill went for the real deal.....and immediately found herself tipsy! It didn't really seem to be a proportionate response but there you go!

And then back to base where we knew that Marie our host would be back from her trip. It was lovely to meet up with her and find out a bit about the owner of the collections in this house. But also a little strange to not have the house to ourselves and would Marie feel that she needed to act as our host or could we go on fending for ourselves? Fortunately Marie turned out to be a relaxed host with no intention of waiting on us - which bodes well for her visit to us next year.