Dolphins!!!

I searched through a ton of photos to find a picture of a dolphin…..and I found this one I took of a Bottle Nose Dolphin at one of the ECO parks in Cancun.  I can’t believe I almost didn’t go out paddling today…..I would have missed an incredible day of dolphins!  Just as I was heading into the boat ramp area, I saw two paddling friends coming my way.  One of them was “hooting” and I wondered what he was doing….and then I saw them……a pod of Spinner dolphins coming up from under the water!  I whipped my board around and started to follow them.  The dolphins were just making circles in the water,  sometimes breaking off into groups of four or five.  I tried to count them and came up with about twenty dolphins in the group!  They were so close and at one point I was in between two groups, and a dolphin shot out of the water to my left,  spun around and splashed in, and then another dolphin off to my right did the same thing!  It was like I had a private show!  An older man and his wife came out on paddle boards and then I recognized the man as being out one other day when I paddled with dolphins.  He yelled to me and asked, “Do you bring the dolphins out every time I come out?”  I just laughed!  Then I heard him tell his wife I was the “Dolphin Lady”.  We were all having a ball paddling with the dolphins and then the dolphins swam very close to the rocks by the shore.  Some other people stopped following the dolphins, but I stayed right with them!  I had a pod of about ten dolphins I was paddling with and they stayed right with me.  I could see them next to me and at the nose of my board, it was so cool!  As the dolphins and I passed the boat ramp, I could see several turtles bobbing at the surface and we zipped right through them!  I couldn’t believe that I was paddling with dolphins right next to turtles, all at the same time!  The dolphins led me all the way down to Keawakapu Beach,  swimming next to me with some of them swimming upside down so I could see their bellies!  Then a couple of them did some tail slaps on the surface of the water too!  A man and woman in a kayak were trying to catch up to us, but they were too slow.  I ran into them when I left the dolphins to paddle north….then I looked  back and saw the dolphins still frolicking in the water!  I told the kayakers that if they hurried, they might get to see the dolphins.  The woman in the kayak said, “Wow, those dolphins seemed to really like you!”  Weird as it sounds……it seemed to be true!  I spent close to an hour with the dolphins and then paddling past the boat ramp, the turtles started to beckon me,  so I turned towards them.  There were so many turtles that I don’t really know how many there were today!  I was having such a great time with the turtles that I didn’t notice the pontoon snorkel boat cruising into the area.  The boat had quite a few snorkelers on it, but I decided to stick around since there were so many turtles popping up!  At two different times I had turtles drift under my board, and both of them tried to surface under me and hit my board with a “thud and a clunk”!  It was so funny!  I chatted briefly with the crew of the boat and then I headed back.  The conditions were so nice that I wondered about the wind, but it never came up all the time I was at the beach.  I even ran across a turtle paddling in too!  My swim was great too….what a magnificent day all around!!!!!!