Saturday 31st January
Since the first day we have been in Mirissa, we thought about a Whale watching tour. When you stroll around there you see a lot of ads for different tours with a wide range of prices. By checking Tripadvisor we tried to figure out which one we should pick. As Raja’s Whale tour seemed to be the most respectful to the animals, we decided to go with them, even tough they are by far the most expensive ones. Their price is 6500 rupees per person (about 43€) compared to others which you can get from 1500-2000 rupees on (about 10-13€).
Almost all tours start at about 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning and all the boats leave from the same harbor.
To keep the story short, we didn’t see any whales on that day and were quite unlucky. All the days before we saw the boards with the number of different whales which have been observed on the tour that day and there was never one with the big 0 on it. We just saw about 5 dolphins on the whole 6-7 hour trip. Seeing them jump out of the water and doing some spins for us was impressive, but still we wanted to see some whales.
It was quite exhausting and after seeing all the other whale watching boats taking the same routes and trying to scan the same 3-4 areas where the whales usually are, we were not so sure anymore if the steep price for Raja was appropriate. The main problem was that with the other tours you get usually half the money back when there is no sighting of whales. With Raja you just get a voucher that you can do it again the next day. But again 6-7 hours on a boat, hmmm. We were not so sure about it.
The cool thing was that we met other Austrian friends in the evening and said they can do the tour tomorrow and use our names for it. So at least they could try again.
The service on the whole trip was ok, but for like 3 times the price compared to the other whale watching companies I was expecting a bit more. They also did not really explain a lot about whales or dolphins or anything you could expect on the trip. So the learning experience was quite modest. If you get the chance to pick a tour, I would say pick some other that Raja’s.
Accommodation in Mirissa.