My absolute favorite day of the trip! Nothing beats African safaris, but swimming in the open ocean with dolphins was absolutely incredible.

Our morning started early, as we needed to pack everything in the car before checking in for the encounter at 8 am. We only needed to bring our swimsuits and towels, as they provided everything else for us. We rented a GoPro for the encounter, which I’m glad we did, as Grant got some fantastic videos of them swimming up to us. And after watching the videos, we realized they were making a lot of noise in the water that we couldn’t initially tell when swimming with them.

After putting on our wet suits, we watched the safety video and boarded the bus for the quick 10-minute ride to the boats. We learned during the video and ride that this is a special place in the world in that these Dusky Dolphins do not need to migrate – they stay in this area year round. They are the smallest breed of dolphins in the world but are extremely playful and enjoy jumping out of the water to do flips and tricks. The encounter does not do any feeding or allow people to touch the dolphins so as to not disturb their natural habits.

They split us into two groups and loaded us onto the boats to head toward the group of dolphins. They said this was a good morning for the tour as the water was calm, and the dolphins were spotted just 15 minutes off the coast meaning we got to spend more time swimming and less time in transit. Once we arrived where they were, we put on our snorkel equipment and prepared to hop into the water. I ended up being the first to jump in and swam towards them. They told us to act like dolphins by making a bunch of noises in our snorkels to attract them and try to swim like them, especially if they came up to us. So you’ll notice in the videos there’s a lot of people (including us) making ridiculous noises but we felt it helped them want to play.

It took me the second time hopping in the water to finally find Grant while swimming. Though we were both in awe of what was happening, we were focused on getting as much time swimming with the dolphins as possible. It was crazy to interact with them as they would look you in the eye and spin around you. They are super fast swimmers, and I would get dizzy after about the third or fourth spin with them. After our swim time, we enjoyed viewing them from the boat’s bow. We got some good pictures of them jumping out of the water, especially around the paddleboarders and kayakers. I was sad when it was time to head back to shore!

We once saw a video that you can go to the waters far north of Finland in the winter and swim in the freezing arctic circle with wild Orcas. This experience 100% confirmed that I would enjoy this so hope to make this a future trip as the Orca is my favorite animal in the world.

Back at the center, we stopped by the front desk to have them download the GoPro photos and videos to have them before we left. We asked them where they recommended lunch, and they both agreed Slam Club was the best for a good sandwich.

After lunch, we tried to head back to the shore to get some drone footage of the dolphins, but unfortunately, we were just inside a no-fly zone, so instead, we made our way to Picton to catch the ferry to the North Island for our last few days of the trip. And in true Meghan fashion, I was worried about checking in on time for the ferry and wasn’t thrilled when Grant wanted to head back into town to get some dinner as we didn’t know if the ferry had food. We grabbed Subway sandwiches and returned to the ferry station to board. And like Grant always says in these situations, “It always works out.” I’ve relaxed a little bit on the travel day stress, but I still can’t help myself with wanting to be early to things. It’s hard to break the habit after it’s been engrained for so long.

Once boarded, we hung out outside until the ferry left the dock to get a view of the strait while there was still some daylight left. However, it quickly got dark within the first ten minutes of the ride, so we headed inside to find a seat and get warm. The three-hour ferry passed quickly as Grant read and I watched some Netflix and worked on the blog.

When we arrived in Wellington, we grabbed our bags and an Uber to head to our hotel. Our Romanian driver was not a big fan of the group of Asians that were blocking the roadway to load their luggage onto their tour buses. He was quite the character but told us he loved living in Wellington as they are far away from the politics of the rest of the world. He dropped us off at our hotel and quickly rushed off for another Uber pickup. Again, we checked into the hotel with no one checking our IDs. I didn’t get used to that as everywhere in the States requires an ID and card for incidentals. Our room was small, but it was a place to rest our heads for the night before we continued our journey toward Auckland.