Mexico. Loved our day here. The dolphin experience was pretty great. I was looking to find fault and be outraged at the way the animals were treated. I didn't see anything. They were much loved and respected by everyone. There were lots of eyes on us making sure we were calm and following the rules. One lady in our group got weird about seeing that our dolphin has teeth and she was asked to leave. Not sure what the whole story was but it was clear they wanted her out of the pool. Our dolphin was Olympia, she is 18 and she is a nanny. There was a six month old there with her. Cute. Following what Olympia was doing but not with us just near us. We learned lots. We all got to take turns massaging her, tickling her tummy, holding her, giving her hand commands, having her swim up to our hands, letting her kiss our cheeks and finally kissing her back. After our interaction they served a decent lunch and we could watch some of the other dolphins doing their things. Some of them were quite active, lots of fast swimming and high leaps. Playing with balls. One of the trainers pulled me aside to let me know they choose Olypia for us because she is super gentle. They were all great about making things ok for Luk and Kai. Luk wasn't so thrilled overall. He wasn't comfortable about the cold water, didn't like the life jacket. Couldn't reach the ground. Likely would have preferred being with Eric but I passed Kai to Eric after a couple minutes. He was just too heavy for me. Kai was full steam ahead. He has been great with the critters.
We were back to the port with a couple hours to spare so we finally got a bit of shopping time. Mostly looking for tshirts. I did find a huge blanket of the Mayan calendar. Happy with my find ;) Jia was on the hunt for a shirt with dolphins. Kai chimed in clearly that he wanted a shirt with a tucan. We actually found one.
Will post pictures of the dolphins later. Too slow down loading them.
