This is Indigo, the boat on which I lived for five days and five glorious nights.
The nights were so glorious because of the quarters. I would show you more but I am crammed into the farthest reaches of the cabin to take this picture. To be fair, Jen and I stayed in a crew cabin since we were late add ons to the trip. The real guest cabins are much nicer and even have bathrooms. Bonus. But we didn't care because below is why we were there...
All of the above photos are courtesy of Manuel Sam who lives to take dive trips and has chosen his camera accordingly. Thanks Manuel!
There were other activities besides swimming with the dolphins. In fact, for the first four days the wind thwarted our travels out to the dolphin grounds so we did things like...
...learn about sharks at the "Shark Lab", a field research center just down the road from the dock in South Bimini. Little known fact; if you flip a shark over onto it's back it involuntarily falls asleep. That should be handy for someone out there.
Speaking of the road in South Bimini (permanent population: 50) cars are not a big part of the equation as you can see below.
Golf carts however rule supreme. Hour rentals on North Bimini (permanent population: 1600) run $25 for an hour and we took advantage of this deal to explore the "Big City" one day.
Other activities we engaged in while waiting for our shot with the dolphins?
We snorkeled the length of the famous "road of Atlantis" (yes, that Atlantis) which was impressive for it's straightness in an environment where nothing follows a grid.
Snorkeling became a main activity while we prayed for the winds to die down. And the rewards were great. By far the most memorable experience happened on our last trip. We were just about to get out of the water when we surprised nine spotted eagle rays sitting on the floor below. They took off, swimming like a flock of birds beneath us. We kicked hard and followed them for about five minutes before giving up the chase. Just one of them could wrap itself around me and hide me completely with it's wings. Manuel wasn't on hand for the nine rays but he did capture an image of a lone swimmer. This scrawny fellow has a wingspan of about five feet.
And last but not least in our list of non dolphin swimming activities... we did not give ourselves the name "Aquaholics" for nothing. One establishment asked it's patrons to leave their underwear behind, preferably signed and hung from the rafters. While I left with all clothing in place we did grab a photo to commemorate the night.
We socialized in less seemly places too. Below is the full "pod" (minus Jen who is taking the photo) on our home turf, the restaurant and bar just off the South Bimini dock.
It was a great trip and if anyone ever wants to try it for themselves I highly recommend it. The name of the company is Dolphin Expeditions and the link to follow is http://www.dolphinexpeditions.com/
I'm going to ride off into the sunset now but I hope I didn't bore you too much with my travel slide show. There are many photos I left out so you can either count yourself lucky or come by for the full monty.
Peace and Dolphins, Brittan
