Day Two -- Dolphin Encounter...

We woke up bright and early this morning, grabbed breakfast at the in-hotel Starbucks (gotta love Sheraton/Westin for having those!), and got ready to head out to the UNEXSO Dolphin Encounter. I booked this before we left and am so glad I did...we had a BLAST!!

I thought it would take place at the large facility across the street from our hotel, but we found out when we checked in this morning that we had to take a 15 minute boat road over to where the dolphins were. Score!! Yums LOVES boats and we knew that would be the icing on the cake. We boarded the boat with all the other tourists decked in wetsuits (we're used to the cold water...and giggled at them!) and made our way through the canals of Lucaya to the dolphins. Just before the canal opens up to the ocean is a large facility where UNEXSO (underwater exploration society maybe?!) trains the dolphins, does their encounters, as well as other acquatic research. We get off the boat and Yums immediately spots these GIANT lizard things. Now, we're used to chameleons in FL but these were like miniature iguanas! He LOVED them and it took all we had to get him to not chase them all over the facility. We did our best to wrangle him so we could listen to the instructions on how to handle the dolphins. We made our way down to the platform surrounding the dolphin area and Yums started to freak out. Then WE started to freak out as we realized how ICE cold the water was!!

Thankfully we were part of the first group to get in the water and didn't have to keep Yums occupied for long! He started to get really nervous as I climbed down the ladder holding him (he's deathly afraid of pools for some reason) but calmed down once he saw all the fish swimming below us and in and out of our legs. He got really excited when the dolphin swam up between Mommy and Papa and we all got to pet him, tickle him on his belly, and blow him kisses. They did some tricks around us then came back to give kisses while the staff took pictures. I think the three of us got to stay in the water with them the longest out of the 20 or so people that were there. Yums definitely got his fill of petting the dolphins and "talking" to them (the more obnoxious the noise the more Yums loves to do it!).

After the dolphin encounter was over we got to feed and hold some parrots and cockatoos. We have lots of pictures of that, but those will have to wait til we get back. I didn't dare take my camera down to the dolphins, as they warned us we'd get wet. And boy did we ever...especially when the trainers TOLD them to splash us! Patrick and Yums had just got dry shirts on...I (thankfully) didn't bother and was the only one with dry clothes to return to the hotel in! ;) Anyway, Yums wanted to hold and feed the birds, but got really nervous when they came near him. He did think it was way cool when Mommy held him AND the bird. Those pictures that Patrick took are my FAVORITE so far!

We got back and headed for the beach. Patrick (praise GOD as we were all STARVING) went and got lunch at the Subway across the street....I don't know if I could do another $18 ceaser salad out of a bag with three shrimp! ;) We headed up to the room 3 hours later to try and get Yums down for a nap. He begged to watch "Cars" on the laptop and 5 minutes into it fell asleep in the chair. He's now napping happily in bed and we're getting a much needed break!

And because I wanted to be able to post a picture, here's a picture of the picture from the Dolphin Encounter today..