Monday. Overcast all day except while we were at Dolphin Cay.
We’ve found *our spot* - near the pool that’s warm-ish, across the path from the beach, near food and drinks and bathrooms and towels. So we started by putting our stuff down on some chairs at 9, and then the girls got in the pool and Jeff walked to get us breakfast sandwiches.
After lunch we headed over to Dolphin Cay. Abby kept saying she didn’t want to do the Playtime with Dolphins and I was trying to get to the bottom of why - was she nervous? No, she didn’t want to wear their wetsuit because it was black - ha! I told her Aunt Mego wears black all the time and she’s one of the coolest people I know, so it couldn’t be a bad color.
We got there and got a brief orientation (listen to the trainers, don’t bring any electronics or big jewelry into the cay) and then the guy had us line up for wetsuits. He clearly has done this a while because he gave everyone a quick once over and then plucked the perfect size wetsuit off the rack. Once suited up we went onto the beach, they told us dolphins have a mucus layer over their eyes that protect them from the saltwater or debris getting in their eyes so to be very careful around their eyes. Then they separated us into 3 groups (we were with two other families with young kids) and we got to meet our dolphin, Hercules. First we lined up with our hands on top of the water and he swam by under our hands so we could touch him. I should explain that the cay is quite big - they said we were in the area with the males, the middle is the females, and the far side had babies and moms. The back section is for wild rescues they rehabilitate and return to the ocean. The cay has a beach around it and you can walk into the water - once you get to about waist deep, it drops off to be really deep, so the dolphins can swim fast out there and jump and dive. Hercules mostly stayed in close by us in the shallow part, but occasionally went out to do tricks. After we got a chance to pet him the trainer (Dario) had him back up to us (Dario said this takes immense trust) and Jeff held his tail up while we all got to pet him. Then we got our dolphin kisses! Dario called us up one at a time and asked us to hold out a hand palm up, then when Hercules got close we held his chin and pulled him in to our cheek and the photographer on hand (yes, of course they’ll sell you the pics at the end!) took pictures. It was super cool and really cute pics. Then we got to high five him (Dario had us stand out one at the time, put our hand out, call 1, 2, 3, hi-ya! And then Hercules popped up out of the water upright and we slapped his flipper. The last thing we got to do was tickle him … he came up to me and the girls with his belly up and we tickled him and he flapped his flippers like he was laughing. All very cute, lots of other tricks and jokes and splashing along the way. Abby was too young to swim with the dolphins, which would be really cool, but I wonder if we didn’t get to interact more with them this way.
After we bought a few picture we dragged the girls out of the gift store, did some more swimming, and then headed back to the room. We had dinner reservations at Seafire, a steakhouse on the property out by the marina. We wandered through by some shops and some giant yachts.
The girls did pretty well at dinner considering the restaurant. They were amazed at how many forks they had and loved the fancy stemmed water glasses. Abby had a couple of chicken nuggets, Lauren had plain pasta. Jeff had lobster bisque followed by lobster, I had a caprese salad and short ribs (flavor was excellent as were all the accouterments, but the meat was really tough). Our waiter was super kind to the girls - he said his are now in their 20s. When we were taking their leftovers to go, he disappeared to find a bag. When he came back with a plain brown paper bag with handles, he said “let’s make this look like you did some serious shopping tonight!” And he wrote Gucci on the bag - ha! Later as Abby literally dragged it down the hallway in the hotel the guy behind us said “I like your bag” and Abby proudly told him it contained chicken fingers.
Comments