Dolphin Swim

 For my wife's birthday I set up a dolphin encounter at the Motobu Wellness Center

 I had kept it a secret, and when we showed up she had no idea what it was. They had a little "pond" set up that had a sea turtle and tropical fish.

 See the turtle under the fish. Sure beats a koi pond.

 Then they had us get in. This picture was taken moments before my wife slipped on a rock and wiped out. She was a trooper, though, and it worked as a good ice breaker with our group, since they didn't speak much English.

 You can tell that she hurt her right hand when she fell.

 There is that ocean "pond" off to the left. At this moment, she still didn't know what this was.

 The goats helped throw her off the trail of what we were really doing, but as time wore on and they showed us the goats and the tortoises I began to hope that I really had signed up for the dolpin swim given the language barrier...

But then it was time for the main event.

There was a typhoon to the south, and I was afraid they were going to cancel due to weather. I called them the morning of and they said, no typhoon, just rain...no cancel. That said, you have to love a place where the water is so blue even when the sky is gray.

 No that is not a shark. If it was, though, I wouldn't mind, but my wife says she's not ready to swim with sharks yet. Before we went in to the water we had to have a brief from the guide on safety and cetacean education, the part we didn't like and tried to immediately forget was when, in their limited English, they told us "dolphin...eat".  As in they are good to eat. No dolphin safe tuna here.

 Close enough?

 This tour has really been great for animal encounters.

 Nice to meet you, Moni (this one's name)

 And you as well.

 Moni did some showing off.

 Then we got to play with her.

 

Rewarding good behavior.

 

 I have to tell you. This was one of the coolest things ever. The look on my face says it all.

Good girl.

Look at all of the fish swimming around her. What was amazing was this was in the ocean, not in a tank.

 Kisses.

It was worth it for this smile.

Thanks for not biting me, Moni.

 We got in the water and had one jump over us.

Then it was time for rides.

The water was fairly clear, but they still just came up out of the deep and took us for a ride.

My wife and I agree that from now on we should do all of our tropical ocean travel by dolphin.

 Waiting for a ride.

 Being pulled by this 600 lb animal was indescribable.

 Very fun.

 I think she is having fun...

Yes, definitely having fun.

 Bye guys

 A pretty fun present.

I'm glad the signs didn't give away the surprise.

My wife and daughter went and got their toes done for her birthday as well. My wife selected this design but changed the colors to be the cherry blossoms with the blue ocean. She told the women there that it reminded her of Okinawa, and they loved that.

And we got her this decadent chocolate cake.

August Birthdays

First it was the second birthday for our youngest. He had his party hair ready to go.

 The fun-fetti cake.

 So sweet

 He does this thing we call Jagger lips, and we had to document it for posterity.

Oh yeah

 it leads to family member emulation

and large smiles

 presents

He loves this little lawn mower.

 Birthday dinner at McD's

 getting so big

 The next week was our daughter's birthday

making a wish

 presents

 a guitar for our future superstar

birthday chandelier

 Then it was time for some playing

too cool

Whale Shark Dive

So, we finally got scuba certified a while back (better late than never)and one of the things I really wanted to do before we left was dive with the whale sharks. There were two just a five minute boat ride from Yomitan on the North side of Torii Beach.

My wife is such a trooper! She is fearless...tigers, elephants, whale sharks...bring 'em on.

Now that's a big fish.

We got to touch them, and they did not feel like I thought they would, they were softer and almost spongy to the touch.

There were two in the net: a 10 footer and a 20 footer. The net was so large that you could not see across to the other side.

And you could not see the bottom of it. Knowing it was there, though, helped my wife not be scared of the abyss.

The Japanese fed them, which caused them to go verticle.

It also led them to come check us out and make sure we didn't have any food.

 They were very graceful and much faster than you would think. They are so big that they don't look like they are moving that fast, until you try to swim next to them.

My wife takes better pictures. I wised up and gave her the camera half way through. The Japanese are only contracted to give us 20 minutes in the net, but we lucked out and got 34.

When they would swim by and underneath you, it was all she could do not to ride it (that's not us, but a cool shot).

It was amazing. This is a screen grab from a video that the blog won't let me upload, but was incredible. I was watching and filming my wife with the large one, when the smaller one swam off to my left. I thought nothing of it and continued to film until I got that feeling that something was there off to my left. I turned and the mouth of that enormous fish was touching my mask. It's really funny on the video as you can hear me jump. It then swam past with me pushing on it to move it to arms length before it went back and joined its companion. What an experience.