Day 6 Christchurch, New Zealand

It's my 21st birthday!And I'm 12,000 miles from home, in Christchurch New Zealand!…leaving for Bendigo in eight hours at 4am. This morning we got up at 7am in our one room cabin and drove to Dolphin Encounter - the place where you swim with the dolphins. We ate breakfast at the Dolphin Encounter café and started worrying after being told that the swells were pretty high and that the dolphin tour could possibly get cancelled due to weather. Thankfully they went on with the tour. We got fitted for wetsuits and were given a mask and snorkel, hoodie, and wetsuit top and bottom. A group of about 20-30 of us got bused to the dock where we were spit up into three boats. On the boat we went out into the ocean for about 25 minutes, and while we were going out we were prepped on what to do when we found the dolphins.

Our captain found a pod of about 200 dolphins. As everyone started to go off the back of the boat I waited and slid in. The water was so cold that it immediately took my breath away. I tried taking big gulps of air but failed because I had a snorkel in my mouth. I was waiting for the water in my wetsuit to warm up so I could hopefully breathe normally. The crew from the boat was yelling and pointing to where to swim for the dolphins, but I was too cold. The others had their heads in the water and were swimming away, how could they be going so strong? After awhile I got somewhat used to the water and started swimming. We were supposed to make noise to attract the dolphins but I couldn't waste air making noise. By just swimming the dolphins soon swam just inches away from me, and I could easily just reach out touch them. When one would get close I would swim in circles with it and it would get excited and swim faster in circles and start to go to deeper, then it would swim away. Once I got used to the water I started diving down under the water and this would attract the dolphins and get them excited as well. The big waves were pretty big, making it hard to navigate too.

Finally mom and I realized that everyone went back to the boat so we headed back too. Once on the boat we moved a little ways and you could go back in. I was so cold that I couldn't get back into the water - my toes were frozen.My toes are always cold, but this time they were ice cubes. The water was definitely colder than those Wednesday morning Haitcho swims at 9am. I was the only one to stay out of the water and got to use the hot water hose to warm up. It felt so good, but after I stripped off my wet suit and got my clothes back on it was much better. My toes didn't get back to normal until we were back to the base though.

Soon everyone else was back on the boat and started changing back into warm clothes. We spent the next 20-or-so minutes boating around watching the 200 dolphins swimming and jumping out of the water. They all have such character doing different flips. The front belly flips were my favorite. Once we got back to the Dolphin Encounter headquarters we could take hot showers. We drove back to Christchurch, and exhausted are going to bed early. And I have to be up in a few hours to fly back to Australia…