Choose your year!

First

These are natural, unscripted encounters. Giving yourself only one or two days to swim with whales will lead to disappointment if you don’t see any. It takes time to find the whales and, once we do, we must determine if they want to stay and play with us. Not all whales want to interact. Some are on the move, or maybe they just don’t feel like it. So we leave these whales alone. This process can take all day.

We generally get in the water with whales almost everyday, it really comes down to the quality of those swims.

Typically you can expect 1-3 amazing days on a 5 swim day tour, and 3-6 amazing days on an 8 swim day tour. If this has been your dream, we highly encourage you to do an 8 swim day trip. You are coming all this way, and nature needs time to try and deliver.

Second

We’ve got to account for the weather. It’s winter in Tonga, which means it can sometimes be cold, rainy and windy. You don’t want to come all this way and then find out that the two swim days you booked are rainy and windy. Bad weather could negatively affect the quality of your day. Especially if you want to grab photos or videos, then lighting can become an issue as well. Water temp is roughly 25/26C throughout the season.

Third

It’s important to focus on the quality of the encounter. Yes, you can go for a day or two and get lucky with an amazing encounter. But at the end of the day, the longer you spend on the water, the more likely you will have some mind-blowing experiences.

Finally

Consider the quality of the operator. There are only 15-20 boats out there, so most of them get booked out by tour agents like us. This leaves very few boats for “day trippers.” It is very hard to find a quality operator, as swimming with whales is an art. As the years progress, you will find it quite difficult to get a day tripper booking with a quality, skilled, licensed operator in Vava’u.