Swimming with Dolphins

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“. . . girl don't let your dreams be dreams
you know this living is not so hard as it seems . . .” Jack Johnson

The song that was playing in a café one day in June around the time I read about a holiday run by an English company where you can “swim with dolphins in the open ocean”. It just so happened their next trip worked perfectly into my schedule, so I signed on to the adventure to experience, up close and personal, one of my great loves . . . dolphins.

So here I am (let’s pretend I’m up to date with my blog) in the Azores, on the island of Pico, which is located between Portugal and the US. Pico reminds me a little bit of the big island of Hawaii but less developed and very little tourism.

Nine days, 21 Englishmen/women/children, and one American . . . I’ve picked up a lot of new “English” terms and maybe even a little bit of an accent. Out of respect for their culture, during the nine days I called french fries “chips”, chips “crisps” and even threw in a couple adjectives here and there like “splendid”, “quite”, and “proper”. We had a great mix of families and individuals and I now have a lot more friends in the UK to come and visit.

Out of nine days we had six opportunities on the boats, three hours each time. Basically, we would drive around while spotters on land search for dolphins and whales with very powerful binoculars. The first day I was on the speedboat and we picked up a school of dolphins pretty quickly. Once we spot the dolphins we would stay near them to see if they are curious and want to “play” or if they’re hunting and don’t want to be bothered. Sometimes they just want to ride along side of the boat or will show off by jumping out of the water.

The first day I got in the water was with the striped dolphins and although it was brief, it was amazing. They are quite talkative too, even though I have no clue what they’re saying. I’m sure it’s something along the lines of, “what is this random thing in the water with us?” Three of them were swimming together and the one in the middle looked right at me and pretty much said “I don’t think so” and they took off.

I had a couple more experiences throughout the week, but my last one was by far the best. I can’t even describe the feeling to be out in the middle of the ocean with a snorkel, mask and a bunch of dolphins making some noise and swimming around, but it is pretty great. Every time someone would come out of the water they would have the big “dolphin smile”.

Other notable highlights or lowlights of the trip:
Shearwater Birds - Similar to a Seagull but ten times more annoying. These birds are quiet all day and then right at bedtime they fly around making the most annoying noise possible, and would make a point to fly right by my window. I wish I had a faster internet connection so I could upload the video I took at 4:AM on my last day so you can hear the sounds they make.

Attack of the Sea Urchin - All my years living near the beach I’ve managed to escape the needles of sea urchins, that is until now. After pulling a couple of the larger needles out of my foot the chef at the hotel sat down with a needle and alcohol and dug into my foot for about 20 minutes to get the rest out. Good times.

Great Product to Share: For all those rugged travelers, people who want to take underwater photos, or those who tend to drop their cameras often (you know who you are), I highly recommend the Olympus Stylus 770 SW. It is waterproof up to 30ft, shockproof (you can drop it from 5ft, put 200lbs on it), and even takes video. I have done all of the above and after 9 days of hopping in and out of boats it’s still working!

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