Swimming with the sharks

Hey, it's Francois here. I've been taking the back seat while on holidays. I was letting Ed expressing his inner-blogger. I have to admit I find him quite entertaining to read. Don't you agree? I should make him contribute to my blog when we get back to Canada.

As I'm writing this, I'm on a slight buzz from the Sauvignon Bland I've been trophing for the last two hours. I love it that you can buy a $10 bottle of wine that would cost $28 in Canada. Such good value for money. Let's just say that I'm glad I don't live in New Zealand otherwise I would be a total wino.

Ed, Lynne and I just had the most fantastic day today. We woke up early and made our way to Kaikoura for our "Swim With The Shark" encounter. I honestly thought it would suck. I figured that any dolphin related activity was about of tarty as a wolf to the moon blanket or velours framed art. Turned out that I was wrong.

Words fail me and I can't describe how magical the whole experience was. Imagine this: turquoise water, sunny cloudless day and 200-dolphin swimming right in front of you. On my first outing, a dolphin brushed against me and he looked at me and circled around me in a playful way for about 30 seconds. We were told to make dolphin-like noises through the scuba and "act" like a dolphin. So I did! I'm sure I looked like a right idiot but I didn't care. I honestly felt like I was connecting with the dolphins. I'm sure they were looking at me wondering what kind of strange creature I was. The husky dolphins were wild, in their natural habitat. The tour operator don't feed them and the animals are protected by the Department of Conservation.

I've been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit and engage in many activities. Nothing compares to what I did today. I felt like I was part of the ecosystem and I was making friends with very smart creatures.

I've heard of dolphin swimming in the Caribain sea but the New Zealand encounter was nothing like it because the animals are in their natural habitat. I felt I was entertaining them, not the other way around.

Sorry folks no pictures, we have some really cool ones, video and all!!! Stay tuned...