Triple kiwi!

Douglas Adams ones said: "Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water
having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

Dolphins are truly amazing!
The best thing about 'the dolphin encounter' is the fact that they respect wildlife.
The dolphins are not fed or lurged in any way to the boat. They are wild, not trained and it's up to them if they want to come over or not.
In fact, dolphins are curious creatures and we needed to draw their attention. It's like a street artist. If he is not interesting, people will just walk by, but if they are they will hang out and watch.
Same with the dolphins. In this case we were the 'street' artists.
Before we went on the boat to go and see the dolphins we got into our wetsuits and started to look like a dolphin ourselves :)
Then they took us into the ocean and as soon as we saw them flipping and jumping in the water we got in to. At first it was hard to draw their attention, guess we were too boring but after swimming in cirkles and humming/singing (which is not easy with a snorkel) they came to check us out.
It was so amazing, a few times a dolphin actually followed me and looked me in my goggles. *SIGH* I fell in love with them :)

After the dolphin swimming I got back to my hostel (The Dusky Lodge) and jumped into the pool since it was still hot.
After a nice shower I had some red new zealand wine and good conversations. A perfect end to a perfect day.

The next morning I had to say goodbye to the South Island and jump back on the ferry to get back up to Auckland.

I had a stopover in Wellington last night and this morning I hopped on another magic bus to Napier, an Art Deco city next to the beach.
But before we got there we got to know our new driver. Man... I shouldn't say 'asshole' but he was. It was 7:45 in the morning when only 11 of us got on. And he said we were too quite so he found us boring and didn't want to talk to us.
WTF?? It's not our job to entertain the driver.
Anyway, I hope he is in a better mood tomorrow because unfortunately I'm stuck with him for antoher 2 days.
Luckily the others on the bus are nice.

Oh, and today I saw a real kiwi bird. They are cute. Look like kiwi fruit.
Speaking about the kiwi fruit, after seeing the kiwi bird I finally found some New Zealand kiwi fruit, unfortunately it was rotting... But, I found something even better: the kiwi-berry :)
A small kiwi that looke a bit like a grape. It tastes like a kiwi :)

Tomorrow the bus will take me to Mt Manganui, another beachtown. And the weather is really nice so tomorrow I'm gonna enjoy some time at the beach. I hope.
And on Sunday I'll arrive in Auckland where I'll be spending 3 nights. It will be good to have a 'bed' for 3 nights in a row since I'm getting a little exhausted to sleep somewhere else every night and getting up really early.
Some nights I sleep fine but the last couple of nights I'm awake like every 2 or 3 hours. I can feel i'm not 20 anymore :)

Sunny greetings from Flipper the sequel