Aloha part 3 - Spinners

So yesterday I reached one of my all time goals in life. I got to swim with dolphins.

I wasn't prepared for this at all and went to watch my husband (team no training do his first long swim of the year), swim 2 miles over to the Captain Cook monument at 6.30am. As I was watching him swim back to shore a pod of spinner dolphins swam behind him. (You can see the grey blimps in the water behind Nic in this picture). I was so jealous! As he made his way over the rocks, we stood there watching these majestic creatures of the sea, jump, swim and spin along the Hawaiian shoreline.

As we watched the dolphins swim towards a group of snorkelers not to far from shore. Mary, the other girl I was with, we looked at each other and commented how jealous we were and then we thought hey, lets swim out there. Neither of us were prepared but we stripped down to our underwear and shorts - (glad I wore my white bra) and tried not to show my 'floaters' (got my bumpers awareness month comment in) and started the long swim out to the snorkelers. (We swam out to the first white buoy in this picture).

The water temperature was perfect, the clarity of the water was crystal and the anticipation was relentless. I kept stopping to look up and see if I could see them, they seemed pretty far off. Eventually we got to some of the buoy's and just kind of drifted. Then all of a sudden about 30 feet away came one dolphin who jumped out of the water. He continued in a complete circle around us jumping and diving - I literally could not contain myself as I let out a "wooooo". We were so busy watching him that we didn't notice the rest of the pod come towards us. I suddenly looked down and saw a dolphin underneath me. I tapped Mary and pointed down and as I watched the whole pod calmly swam under us, including 3 mothers and 3 calves. Oh, how I wished I had a snorkel at that moment I couldn't hold my breath long enough. One of the dolphins came up for air less than 10 feet from me, it was exhilerating. There was a remarkable stillness and calm to the whole thing. I could have stayed there for hours. I can see how dolphins are used for rehabilitation because there is just something about them, they are almost magical.

Unfortunatly we had to turn back to shore after about 20 minutes of complete awe only to see the Hawaiian shoreline lit up by the sun causing the most amazing silouette of the mountains and palm trees.

The experience for me was one that will go down in my history along with my wedding day and the birth of my little ones.