I didn't have a clue that I was about to experience one of the best days of my life when I was rudely awoken by my alarm clock at 4.45am this morning. We had booked ourselves in, to go swimming with dolphins with 'Dolphin Encounter' situated in Kaikoura (South Island.) After a brisk fresh walk from the campsite in to town, we arrived keen and eager at the meeting point joining many other enthusiastic and tired faces! As the sun slowly arose we were quickly given our wetsuits, booties, hats, masks, snorkels and flippers and shown the routine instruction video. The excitement started once we were shown the sights of previous lucky tourists surrounded by 100's of playful dolphins but deep down you knew that this didn't happen every day to everyone and some unlucky people sometimes didn't get to see anything! Would today be one of those days? I was starting to really wish not!

We were soon piled on to a bus and driven 10 minutes out of town to the east bay and then shown on to our boats. Even though the sun was up now, it was still a little cold and I started to wonder how fresh the water was going to be! All my concerns vanished 5 minutes later when a vision of beauty left out of the water right in front of my eyes, dolphins! everywhere! I couldn't believe it, we were surrounded. The boat stopped and we were told to go for it. As I jumped in I found it difficult to breath as I was so overwhelmed by what I was seeing plus the cold water was a bit of a shock! As I calmed down I finally started to take it in, there were beautiful dusky dolphins all around me, they were checking me out snd then moving on to the next swimmer! As they rushed by I tried to catch their attention by swimming with them and one cheeky fella stopped and challenged me to a game of circles! Who was the quickest to swim around and around he fastest? needless to say, he won! The dolphins soon dissapeared and we were called back on the boat. 2 minutes later and 20 metres further on we found more and jumped back in. This time I decided to sing to them! We had been told that if we entertained them by singing to them, they would stay around longer! It was very humerous when I lifted my head out of the water and heard all the other swimmers doing the exact same thing! I'm not sure if it worked but there was a constant stream of dolphins checking me out. It was such an overwhelming experience, I didn't want it to end but before we knew it, it was time to get back on the boat as the swimming was over. After a quick hot hose-pipe shower at the front of the boat, we changed and went up on deck armed with our cameras! Now was the time for some great shots! I had an absolute ball!! For a keen photographer I had the perfect subjects who seemed to be putting on a show just for me! They were all around us and our guide happily informed us that it was a pod of approx 200! We felt extremely lucky to have been blessed with such a beautiful clear sunny day, clear waters and so many perfect dusky dolphins!