Advertisement
Published: January 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
It didn't take long to find a campsite just outside of Adelaide and as it was only about midday we headed into nearby Glenelg. This is a really nice relaxed town on the beach, yes that's right we'd finally made it back to the ocean-yipee! First stop was to book our 'swimming with wild dolphins' trip for in a couple of days time, this was something I've always wanted to do and the trip looked really good and said you were guaranteed to swim with dolphins so we were both really excited about it. Next stop was a bite to eat so in true seaside style we treated ourselves to a fish and chips lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon watching volleyball matches on the beach as there was some kind of competition on. Back at the tent the temperature really dropped that night, it felt like we'd gone from over 30 degrees to about 2- it was pretty similar to camping in the uk really (only problem is the nights havent warmed up at all!)
The following day we went into Adelaide and did the typical tourist things which included the South Australian and the
Migration Museum-both very interesting then the Art Gallery of South Australia and we ended the day with a nice walk round the Botanic gardens. Then back to the tent for an early night ready for the exciting day that lay ahead.......
We were up at 6.30 (why are trips always so early?!) and down at Glenelg marina by 8 waiting for our caterman. As soon as we got on the boat we were given wetsuits and told to get into them straight away then once everyone was aboard (about 50 people which was a little bit crammed) we set off in search of the dolphins. We had visualised that as we were meant to be "swimming" with the dolphins we would be snorkelling around the boat and everyone would be spread out and the dolphins would be swimming around us. We were wrong! Basically out of the 50 people about 35 were swimming and the guys in charge put out 2 ropes from the back of the boat and when they told us to get in we would have to get into the water really quickly and spread out over the ropes and wait. The first time we did
this aparently there was a dolphin coming our way so we got in quick smart and stuck our heads in the water and we waited and we waited (while getting kicked in the face by the person next to you as they coudnt swim and the rope wasn't long enough for everyone to fit comfortably), then the captain started shouting "Its right by you, keep your heads in the water, look to the left, look to the right........ to late you've missed it", so then we all had to get back onboard. No one saw the dolphin and we're a dubious to whether there was one even there as it said in the small print that if we didnt swim with any we could claim our money back but now we'd all been in and the captain said there was a dolphin no one could claim they didnt swim with dolphins and demand a refund- it wasnt his fault we didnt look the right way!!! We went back in a few more times but the dolphins didnt want to come our way, atleast these times we knew they were around as we'd seen them before getting in. But then we had a disaster as gra had our camera around his neck and he stopped to to untaggle a knot in the rope but the camera got caught and broke the neck strap so it started floating away, luckily I managed to get it before it ended up in Fiji but I had to let go of the rope which the captain wasn't at all happy about- this might have had something to do with the shark deterant that only worked in the area of the ropes-oops. Then on the last go we finally saw a few dolphins swim underneath, this only lasted a few seconds but atleast it was better than nothing. Overall the trip wasn't really that great, well the swimming part anyway, I think the 15 people who didnt swim had a great time and saw loads of dolphins swimming around at the front of the boat while we were all at the back- you live and learn!
We got back to the marina late morning and then spent the rest of the day chilling on the beach before going back to the tent to sort out where we were off to the next morning..........
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0497s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb