Swimming with Dolphins in Key Largo

Trip: Florida Keys – Day 5
Attractions: Dolphins Plus Marine Mammal Responder
Date: February 18th, 2021

3:00 AM – I woke up with a massive headache. Maybe it was the all of the sun, all of the drinks, or all of the saltwater I swallowed while snorkeling the day before, but I was dehydrated, and it hurt. I tried to force myself back to sleep with little success. At 6:00 AM I finally decided to do something about it. I threw on some clothes and ran to a convenience store for some Excedrin. I was able to sleep a bit after it kicked in, despite the caffeine.

I couldn’t let all that fun from day 4 of our trip ruin this day. Not the day we were swimming with dolphins! It’s all the kids would talk about for weeks before the trip! We had booked it before we even left for vacation, strategically telling the kids they had to earn the money for this adventure so they would appreciate it all that much more.

There are a few places we could have done such an excursion, but the place we picked was Dolphins Plus Marine Mammal Responder. Man, it was cool. After our short safety lesson, we got sized up for our life jackets and headed over to the water. To my dismay, they didn’t allow me to use my GoPro because I needed both hands to interact with the dolphins and I didn’t have a head mount or chest strap. Luckily, they had photographers there capturing our special moment. Of course, they needed an additional $89 for us take the pictures home, buuuut it was worth it.

The lead trainer guided us over to a large composite deck platform. Slowly, we were lowered into the seawater until we were about waist deep in the lagoon. The water was cool and refreshing. There’s just something about the cool ocean that tends to snap you out of a hangover. I never did take off my sunglasses while we swam with the dolphins. I was feeling pretty good, but I didn’t want the bright sun to make my headache any worse.

I thought it was interesting how they slowly introduced us to the dolphins in our portion of the lagoon. We had two male dolphins with our group, Bob and Alfonz. The first thing they had us do is stretch our hands out and hold them still so the dolphins could swim by and decide how close they would get to us. The first time around I didn’t even touch the guy. I didn’t want to “jab” at him or move too quickly and break our trust bubble right off the bat. Before long they were swimming by right next to us and we got to feel their slick, yet some how rough, skin. Next, one of our dolphin friends erectly swam by, giving us all high-fives. After a bit, we got all the way into the water and they pulled us, jumped over us, and performed all sorts of cool tricks. It was touching to see how the bond that the trainers had with the dolphins. They were asking the dolphins to do each trick, not forcing them to do anything. In fact, we were warned ahead of time that they might not perform the tricks that they were asked to do. It just kind of depends on the day how compliant they would be. It must have been a good day for them (or us) because there was never a request that wasn’t honored. We even got to give them some of the commands ourselves.

After our time with the dolphins was up, we sat and watched another group finish up their session with another set of dolphins. There was a father and his daughter swimming with a mama dolphin and her calf. Some of the the tricks were the same, some were different. Towards the end of their session, I think we were all a bit startled when the man yelled out in pain. Between grunts and gasps, he managed to get out, “She got me pretty good.” My initial thought was that he had been bitten. It wasn’t long before we learned that he had merely been bumped by the mother, but it was enough to knock the wind out of him. The trainer later told us that the mother doesn’t have much for eyesight anymore and she got lost and swam through the man instead of around him. It’s easy to forget that these are wild animals that weigh over 300 pounds and there is a lot of force behind their swimming power. We later talked to the man about the incident and he had no hard feelings at all. He actually apologized for startling us.

We got into some dry clothes, settled up for the photos and the dolphin swimming and made our way to the our next stop, Key Largo Chocolates, Cakes & Ice Cream. My family REALLY likes ice cream and we had been talking about getting it since we got there. We decided today was the day. Charlie enjoyed the Alligator Tracks, Mattix, the Shark Attack (blue raspberry), Jill got Coffee Oreo, and I, Peanut Butter Swirl. The ice cream was very tasty and we all were satisfied with our choices.

When we got back to the condo, the kids and Jill went down to the pool but I opted for another mid-day nap. When my siesta was over, I went to find them at the pool, but they were ready to get out and wanted to go snorkeling off the beach again. We spent some time swimming with the fish near the marina before catching another beautiful sunset from the dock.

On this day, we decided pizza would be our dinner of choice and called for delivery from Upper Crust. Jill’s birthday was the following day and she thought it would be a good idea to celebrate a little early. She spotted homemade tiramisu on the desert menu, which is her favorite, so we got a slice for her. She was even nice enough to share a few bites with the rest of us. Both dessert and the pizza were very good. We didn’t get anything out of the ordinary. The kids ate pepperoni and Jill and I got the house deluxe.

After gorging on pizza pie and tiramisu, we all crawled into the king sized bed and watched Step Brothers as we fell asleep.