A fabulous morning swim in the pacific ocean

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It’s another early start this morning as at 6am I am at the Ocean Encounter centre and getting kitted out in a full wetsuit, wetsuit jacket, hood, snorkel and flippers. After a short safety briefing video around 15 of us pile onto a boat and speed out into the Pacific Ocean. Whilst we are out on the water, the sky goes from black to a magical redy-orange, as the sunrises over the surrounding mountains. It is whilst we are all memorised by the sky the first dolphins are spotted, and then the whole pod of around 200 start to appear.

Over the next 2 hours we take three swims with the dolphins, and each time I swim I have more and more dolphins around me. It is just amazing, I had around 15 dolphins swimming around and under me at one stage. It is all very natural, as these dolphins are wild, if you don’t interest them or entertain them they just swim away, so actually as it was our jobs to keep the dolphins entertained. Luckily we were given some tips on how to do this – sing through your snorkel, swim round like you are chasing the dolphins and dive down under the water with them. The dolphins did love this, especially when you dived down, but I think it was as much for the people watching on the boats entertainments as the dolphins, especially the singing – I sounded highly amusing every time I popped up to take a breather. After swimming with them for a while, and being suitably exhausted swimming round after them, we spent some time taking photos of the dolphins and enjoying a nice hot chocolate to warm us up before heading back to shore.

Had a lovely afternoon, managing to skype mum briefly, and then braved the now murky looking skies to do the peninsula walk, around the headland, which was beautiful.

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Comments

[Debbie Cull]

Swimming with Dolphins
Hi Kate, This sounds amazing, especially as they are in the wild and not doing it for show. How lucky you are. Love Debbie x