After a while on the beach, we headed out for a dolphin tour, to see if we could get a little closer to these shark-killers. “Captain Mike’s Dolphin Tours” sounded good enough for us, so we paid our cash and headed out!
Ah, there’s not much better than the salt air in your face, the sounds of waves crashing, the hum of a diesel engine, the hopes of dolphins leaping out of the air in front of you, the warm sun on your shoulders, the gentle rhythm of the ocean under you, and the raspy voice of a tour guide. “Huh,” you say? “Everything was good until that last one.” Yeah, I know. Our very nice tour guide was a sweet lady, but probably smoked 20,000 packs too many. Oh well, show me the dolphins, right? As long as this three hour tour didn’t end up like Gilligan’s and I saw a dorsal fin or two, I’d be happy.
Actually, it was a fun time, and we saw an old lighthouse and lots of dolphins. They are pesky creatures, though. They don’t hold still, they splash your expensive camera lens with salt water, and they torment photographers by doing this arching, humped-over motion (porpoising) so that once you see them and lift your camera to your face, they are gone! Now how nice is that? I told Laura to tell them to hold still, but she wouldn’t do it — she just chuckled at me! If you want pictures of dorsal fins or an ocean wave that seconds earlier had a dolphin in it, just let me know — I have plenty on my hard drive to share with you!
Come on Flipper, just show me your eye! Or at least, stand up on your tail fin and go backwards through the air by standing on your tail, like you do at SeaWorld! Oh well.
Dolphin tours, like whale tours (sometimes whale tours are known as Toby Tours! Seriously, click the Toby link for some fun!) are usually best with the camera left in the car. See them, enjoy them, and remember them. I used a long telephoto lens: 200 mm, and the dolphins were still small in my pictures. So, imagine what they look like in some disposable camera or digital point and shoot. You’d have to get out a microscope to look at the little speck in the middle of your picture! Besides, they are gone by the time you aim and shoot your picture anyway. My advice is just go and enjoy it — and then buy a postcard of a dolphin to show your friends. I mean, hey, who doesn’t know what a dolphin looks like, anyway? Take your cameras to SeaWorld, but not on an ocean tour.
Afterwards, we got some ice cream at the Sugar Shack. Since I’m not watching what I’m eating because I’m on vacation, hence, the Toby Tours link above, I wanted to go all out and get a banana split. If I’m going to eat a bunch of calories, I might as well eat A BUNCH of calories! Well, to my heart’s chagrin, but my triglyceride level’s glee, they were out of bananas and thus not serving them. Laura and I went with our old stand-by: chocolate for her, mint chocolate-chip for me.
Later, we saw the lighthouse we visited the other day, this time at dusk, and then rented the movie: Hitman. Good action, terrible acting.
Tomorrow’s plan is to follow the advice of the Eagles band, and “Take it easy.” We might go kayaking, we might sleep on the beach. It’s vacation, so who knows!
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