On the last day of our now long-gone vacation, indeed, the last thing we did before catching the shuttle that took us to the airport, was to play with dolphins.
The resort is on an island and there are two little cays off the key. One of the cays has most of the guest quarters. The other has the dolphin enclosure and a few beaches.
At the enclosure, there are a pod of dolphins living in a nice safe little environment. The dolphins could come and go as they please, which is easy to see when you can study the entire structure. But, the dolphins are living the good life. Food comes to them. Predators can’t bother them. In fact, our local dive master is a regular visitor to this resort and he told us that at least once the dolphins have noticed and pointed out a problem with the enclosure to the animal scientists.
Hey, over here. See that? Could you fix that? And bring more fish. Thanks.
So there’s a dedicated staff that cares for the dolphins, and the behaviorists work with specific ones in terms of their care, socializing them for human interaction and showing off some tricks, but these are very much still wild creatures. These dolphins aren’t domesticated.
We got to hang out with a three-year-old female, still very much a child.
She was often being interrupted by a slightly older male dolphin, at least until the momma dolphin stopped by. Go figure.
They did some tricks and showed off some cool dolphin facts. And then, we got to snorkel with the pod for about 45 minutes. They swim alongside you, check you out, take reeds of long sea grass from you, and otherwise let you watch them do the aquatic swimming things dolphins do all day.
It was a nice way to wind down our visit. When our time with the dolphins was up we caught the ferry back to our room, hastily rinsed off, made sure the last of our things were backed and then caught the ferry back to the island. The shuttle was waiting on us. Everyone was waiting on us. We’re important like that.
Then the airport, checking in, security, customs a two-hour wait for our flight, the trip to Atlanta, sitting on the tarmac in Atlanta (great to be home!) because Delta and/or their contractors (depending on which proffered explanation you liked) couldn’t get their act together. Fortunately we had a long layover at Hartsfield. Instead of spending it in a lounge, we spent it on our first plane before just making it to another terminal, grabbing a sandwich and getting on the flight to Indianapolis. We arrived there on time, drove back in the darkness and got in around midnight, started laundry, went to bed, wandering how we’d spent a whole day like that and dreaming already of taking another trip.
