Christmas Present Unwrapped

The gifts that one receives for giving are so immeasurable 

that it is almost an injustice to receive them.  

~ Rod McKuen

Last Christmas I gave my friends Margarita and her daughter Mariana one-day passes to one of the water parks in Central Florida - Discovery Cove.  They redeemed their passes over the holiday weekend and here are some photos from their adventure:  

Discovery Cove has an aviary, where you can feed the birds.  As you might imagine, this has resulted in VERY friendly birds!  ;)

There is a "coral reef" exhibit where you can swim in (chilly!) salt water with lots of beautiful tropical fish and this "river" for humans only, where you can warm up afterwards:  

The highlight is the 30 minutes or so that you spend in the water getting to know a dolphin.  There are kisses:  

A ride:  

And some belly rubs!  

The dolphins are well trained, but that doesn't mean that they aren't still wild animals - very large, very strong and at least somewhat unpredictable wild animals.  At one point, the dolphin assigned to their group was distracted by another dolphin and the trainers hurried all of the people out of the water while the two dolphins "played" and "flirted" - which I imagine was probably the P.G. rated explanation of what they were actually doing...  ;)

They had a wonderful day!  Some gifts are worth the wait...  :)