PACIFIK ATTITUDE

Une sortie « baleines » extraordinaire ! Le baleineau est venu jouer vers nous, nous avons pu l’observer de près pendant un bon moment ! Merci à Doris et Keanu pour cette superbe expérience ! Véronique

Moment magiques avec les baleines ! Nous avons eu la chance de plonger avec elles au petit matin avec l’excursion sunrise, un souvenir inoubliable.

Inconsistent experiences over 3 days with them - we had booked 1 Morning 9:45am -1:45pm, and 2 sunrise bookings (5:45am - 9:45am). They had free pickup and drop-off transfer which is superb given that we did not live close-by.

I wanted to leave this review for the purpose of improving their future customer experience. We had 3 different guides and captains on each day, each with their own styles which left us with different experiences.

On our first day, we started our morning tour slightly late at 9:55am, because the previous sunrise boat tour (that ends at 9:45am) was late to return. This did not bother us, until our tour also ended 10 minutes early at 1:35pm... would have appreciated the extra 10 minutes at the sandbar!! Our guide was very knowledgeable and shared that the mother whale can spend between 15-30 mins underwater before coming up for air. We observed the mother come up for air twice before returning to the boat.

However on our second day, despite starting the tour on time, they ended the tour 25 minutes earlier than scheduled. We found a mother and calf (likely the same family from the day before) very quickly, but the captain said the other Pacifik attitude boat arrived first, so we left in the search of another whale. However, the guide, photographer and captain were simply chatting away, the boat not moving much, which didn't make us feel like they were looking very hard (very passive) - you could see all customers on the boat getting a bit bored and restless. I appreciate whales are wild, and can be tough to find, but would be great to feel that they're seriously looking. It felt like they were simply waiting for the other Pacifik Attitude boat to be done swimming with the mother whale nearby so that we could go... (apparently two boats from the same company can't be swimming with the same whale). The other boat, by the way, left after us, but somehow got to the whale first... We only ended up swimming with the whale for <30 minutes (we only observed the mother whale come up once), whilst I guess the other boat spent first first >1hour 30 mins with it. If this was our only whale watching experience, we would have been extremely disappointed - especially knowing that both boats had paid the same price.

On our third day, we spent the first 30/45 minutes (after the briefing) actively looking and driving around the island for whales (which was what I expected should have been done on the previous day). Whilst we were in the water, our guide was careful and made sure the whole group was safe (she even asked if we wanted to return to the boat, or continue observing the whale (despite loosing sight of the whale) since we were swimming a lot and a shark had been sighted - maximising our time spent with the animal, which is what is most desirable about the tour. Our guide also educated us to not touch the sting rays at the sandbar, because it can remove their mucus lining that protects them. However, we observed the tourists from the other Pacifik attitude boat constantly touching the rays (and even feeding them - the fish was provided by that boat's captain). I believe the same amount of care given to the whales should also be given to the rays at the sandbank.

Despite some poor experiences, we still wanted to give 5 stars because we did not think it was fair on the great experience we had as well provided by different guides and captains. However, perhaps if we had only joined for 1 tour, our overall experience may have been more negative - hence the main reason for sharing this inconsistent whale tour review.

We want to thank our whale guides Doris and Mareva for leading two of our whale tours. Both of you were extremely friendly, patient and knowledgeable about whales and the other marine life, and helped us maximise our time spent observing and taking videos of the whales - positioning us and making sure we and the whale were safe.

We would still recommend Pacifik Attitude and would return in the future - Merci beaucoup et a bientot.

Super expérience avec Pacifik Attitude pour une excursion baleines !! Un grand merci à Mata et Chewie de ne pas avoir lâché et de nous avoir permis de nager avec les baleines c’était incroyable !

Matinée inoubliable malgré un temps capricieux, tout cela grâce aux efforts de Doris et Andrew qui ont préservé pour nous permettre de nager avec les baleines, c’est un moment suspendu dans le temps.
Merci spécial à Doris pour ses explications et sa bienveillance, notamment pour rassurer ma femme.
Julie et Maxime