Shadowing dolphins



          We got up slightly earlier on the morning of our dolphin trip.  We’d been told to choose a morning trip as the sea was calmer and there’s was more chance of seeing anything.  The early morning didn’t bother me too much, I wasn’t managing the afternoon heat so well and had taken to a timely siesta during the hotter hours later in the day.

          So there we were, stood at the harbourside,  Hubby clutching our ticket and worrying if we were in the right place, and me, I found a shady spot and stayed there until the boat arrived.
         Arrive it did and feeling nowhere near as brave about riding in a speedboat as when we’d bought the tickets two days earlier, I allowed myself to be helped into the rubber “blow-up” boat and clambered onto my seat.  I sat on a horse a few times when I was a kid, note I didn’t say I rode a horse, I just sat there while someone walked infront and pulled me along on a piece of string. If I had actually ridden, I might have felt more at home straddled on my seat waiting for a white knuckle ride to find the dolphins.

          We did have life jackets and although I had complained about the ones we had worn on the first boat trip we’d been on, I couldn’t help thinking the one I had on for this trip was a lot less substantial.

          We set off at a reasonable pace at first, not to make too many waves for the other boats as we passed I guess, but as we left the inlet and headed seaward,  I remembered why I didn’t like roller-coasters.

          Surprisingly enough, once we left the other boats behind the ride became a lot smoother and by the time we were far enough out to find the dolphins the waves had died down to a mere ripple.

          We stopped and watched, we weren’t playing with the dolphins, they were playing with us.  They zig-zagged back and forth underneath the boat, following along in the water with us and breaking the surface two, sometimes three, at a time right up next to the boat

          We were asked to sit tight and the boat sped around and around in a large circle.  We created large waves and the dolphins played under and over them.

          Of course the camera was working overtime while I tried to capture the memory for a later date but sometimes while looking through the lens you miss what is actually happening so I lowered the camera and just watched the dolphins.

          They were magnificent.

          All the time I kept pressing the camera button and although they’re not going to win any prizes, my scattergun approach caught more than enough dolphins to help the memory along at a later date.

          More from before: Lovely holiday in “Lagos“, in the Algarve, July 2015.