Dolphins! We swam with dolphins!!! (27.3.2014)

And I say it again: "We swam with dolphins!!!!" I didn't want to believe it until it really happened, so I did not mention it in the last post in case that got my hopes up. It was something I always wanted to do and we had one last day time, so we thought that we should go out with bang!

We went to Tauranga which is on the Pacific Coast where there is a small company running a tour of dolphin watching and if possible swimming with them. The weather was supposed to be so so, but it was our last chance so we just went for it.

It took more than 2 hours before we even saw the first ones, but it was well worth it! When they eventually came towards our boat it was soooo... incredible! I love dolphins, man. While we had our feet dangling from the bow of the boat, the dolphins were jumping out of the water no more than 10 cm away. It was so cool! (I apologise for my squeaky voice in the video. I was excited)

 

The skipper tried to get close to a larger group but the ones we had were all very agitated so it was hard to keep them in one place (something you need to have for swimming with them). We saw them on and off for the best part of about another 2 hours until we already wanted to turn round when we saw something that even the captain had rarely seen before.

We were following a kind of bird called a gannet which feeds of the same food as dolphins, so they are an indicator for nearby dolphins (usually), when suddenly we saw a lot of commotion on the water. It turned out that a group of about 10 - 15 dolphins circled around a large amount of fish while one at a time the dived in and ate them. It was already a spectacular sight, but the gannets made it actually even more cool. They hunt by flying over the area and then diving into the water with up to 100 km/h to pretty much spear a fish and come to the surface.

So we saw loads of dolphin fins circling this area with other dolphins jumping into said circle. This all causes a "lot" of foam and bubbles and whatnot. Then out of the blue you see the birds gliding in and without warning just diving in. What a spectacle!

At this point, the skipper decided to give the swimming a try... well, I say swimming, I mean holding onto a rail at the back of the boat, while looking down with mask and snorkel (wet suited of course). We were lucky in so many ways. In this case, that there were only 11 people in total (up to 49 is possible), so everyone had plenty of time to look. Isi and I were in the second group.

One thing I forgot to mention. To keep dolphins interested, you need to make a lot of noise, so we were shouting, whistling, screaming, banging against the side of the boat like mad. It helped :) Once Isi and my turn came round, we moved to a different spot. We were anxious to see if we would see anything. I remembered about trying to kick up a fuss, so I tried to scream while snorkeling. Apparently, even the guys on the boat heard me :D

Again though, it worked!... Or at least I like to think that it was my screaming. I swallowed so much salt water because of it, it must have had some good. We had some of the best views of them ever (even the other crew member said so). At times there were 3-5 dolphins not even a meter away from us, dashing and diving around us. I really felt like a 12-year old child again. We have seen dolphins!!! In the wild!!! When it was time to get out of the water, I was so hyper I jumped around the ship for about 5 - 10 minutes before I could sit down again. DOLPHINS!!!

A Czech guy on the trip had a waterproof hand-held camera with him and he filmed the entire dolphin encounter. I gave him my e-mail address and hopefully he will send a mail with the link where to download it from. He even had it with him when he was in the water. Let's see if I can get my hands on that video. We hardly took photos, only at the beginning, partially because we forgot and mainly because the waves shook the boat quite hard (although it was a very calm day) and we were worried to drop it in the water.

After this amazing first half, we chillaxed on the beaches of Tauranga for the other half, before we got home to consume all the food that we still have. It needs to go (damn! :D).

Tomorrow we're off to Auckland for our last stop before we jump on the plane home on Saturday :(

The boat we went on. It has place for 49 passengers... luckily we were only 11 in total