Dear Anyone-Left-Who-Has-Bought-Us-A-Gift-And-I-Haven't-Thanked-Them-For-It-Purely-Accendental-I-Hope-You-Understand-Because-We-Still-Thoroughly-Appreciate-Your-Thought-And-Kindness

I once went to a party where you had to dress up as what you wanted to be when you grew up. I went as a dolphin trainer. This entailed defacing a cheap t-shirt with a marker pen so that it read 'Dolphin Trainer' on it and had a cartoon picture of a dolphin. A rather poor effort at fancy dress I appreciate but in my defense I did accessorise the t-shirt with a pink feather boa, a wig and lots of glitter later in the evening. Yesterday, I got to 'grow up' as we had a day playing with dolphins at a dolphin park. I have since learnt that neither a feather boa, nor glitter, nor a wig, nor even a homemade t-shirt with 'Dolphin Trainer' written on it is appropriate wear if you actually want to be a dolphin trainer in real life. Strange that.

Our day playing with dolphins was at a place called Cozumel. Where is that? we asked innocently. Well, it is the big island you can see opposite Playa Del Carmen every time you lay on the beach and stare out to sea. It is good to know after three weeks of being here we can still learn new things about our surroundings.

To get there we had to get a ferry. For those who are not as experienced travellers as we are, this is the norm for how to get to most islands. In fact, on our trip so far we have had to get a large number of ferries. So many in fact that I think I can proudly say that we have now been on every ferry in the world ever (FACT). This ferry was a particularly good one. Why? For a start, it had a band on it, playing music. They were very good and made the journey so much more enjoyable. It makes you wonder why more ferries don't employ singers. I will be pitching my idea to Wrightlink as soon as we are back. Secondly, we made the mistake of sitting at the back in the corner, which meant that we got very very wet which was very funny at the time.

To get there, we also had to hire a scooter. We didn't have to but we wanted to because we like driving scooters a lot and we haven't done nearly enough of it since Thailand. We paid for it from the very helpful tour operator on the mainland who gave us a receipt which helpfully said we had paid for a scooter but forgot to mention what company it was with. Little did we know that Cozumel has more scooter hire places than anywhere else in the known world (FACT) and so helplessly we wandered from scooter hire to scooter hire asking if they had a scooter for us. This could have ended very badly if there hadn't happened to be a nice man from our scooter hire place who was also wandering around aimlessly calling our name.

And so having negotiated a ferry and hiring a scooter, we were finally off to the main event. Well not quite, we did stop for a lunch at a cute little café overlooking the sea where, when I asked for BBQ wings, the waiter asked if I wanted chicken or beef. Call me old fashioned but I opted for chicken. I did have roasted grasshoppers the night before for dinner so felt that it was ok to play it safe.

Then the dolphins. We spent a thoroughly enjoyable hour in the water with two lovely dolphins. We got to pat them, stroke them and kiss them. The highlight was when they swum alongside us allowing us to grip their fins so they could take us along for a swim.

Donna has this annoying habit that she feels the need to wipe her mouth before she kisses me. I was pleased to see she still feels the need to wipe her mouth when she is kissing dolphins.

The dolphins had been bred in captivity and got to eat lots of fish as a reward for putting up with a bunch of silly tourists enjoying their company. I know a lot of people probably look disapprovingly at this sort of activity from an animal rights perspective and, while I can sympathise with their point of view, they are missing some important points; It is a really fun experience, the dolphins seem very happy, they smile a lot, they enjoy the fish and, at the end of the day, is it any worse than humans domesticating cats and then posting photos of them looking stupid on Facebook?

Dolphins are really cool animals and spending time with them is enough to put a grin on even the most grumpy, cynical person's face. That person being me. I found myself smiling constantly for most of the rest of the day. We fly home via America tomorrow so this was the last activity of our trip. It was brilliant to finish on such a high.

All our love

Jim and Donna