Wild dolphins

To those C10s who joked that I may not survive Australia, I'm in New Zealand now! Nature is kinder here, so I can relax even more. The worst that happened in Australia was an ant crawled into Lauren's shoe and bit her a few times. She took off her shoe, but the ant clung to Lauren's foot for dear life with its jaws. She then killed it. Lauren tends to have unfortunate encounters with ants, and I have examples to support this. If you're interested, you can ask me about Lauren's encounter with a whole army of biting ants in Costa Rica. Poor Lauren.

Dolphins! This day made me want to be a dolphin biologist all over again like I wanted to be when I first fell in love with dolphins at age seven. A guided tour on a 50 foot catamaran took us to see some dolphins. Although it is legal to swim with wild dolphins in New Zealand, we could not swim with these dolphins because there were about four calves with them. The whole pod put on a show for us. These dolphins did not swim as close to the catamaran as the ones near the Great Barrier Reef, but I'd still get super excited to see dolphins even if they were only a speck on the horizon. Although my dad took better pictures with his fancier camera, here are some pictures I took of the dolphins…

 

                            And my favorite...

I tried to identify this individual using her dorsal fin and an identification guide, but I can't see the dorsal fin well enough to determine which dolphin she is.  
   
We went to a beach and hiking area in the Bay of Islands for lunch. And now for some scenery… 

   

The local people in New Zealand (Kiwis) call these Christmas trees.

Pirate tour ship I saw in the distance

 

Quote from Lauren regarding this peeling tree: "I could not bear to have that tree in my backyard. I'd pick at it all day."

Our catamaran