Swimming With Dolphins...

Well... sorry we've not posted for a litle while; we've been cought up with going back to work and getting our lives back in to rhythm again.
So... last week we went to a beautiful white sandy beach called Te Arai with a couple of friends from church - we had a great picnic and enjoyed some bodyboarding in the beautiful sea. The highlight of the day, and infact the whole christmas holiday was having a pod of about 6 dolpins swim up to about 10 metres away in the surf - playing and jumping as dolphins do!! We were blown away by how cool this was, and were assured by the kiwi's that it's not all that common to be out in the water with them.
Today, Laura and I took a drive upcoast to a little beach (well pretty long actually) called Pakiri - again, there was a reasonable swell towards the end of the afternoon, so we got back out in to the water for another body board. We were seperated from the main section of swimmers and body boarders, and my heart skipped a beat, when i saw a fin metres away - Laura saw my face and pretty much pooped her pants, and seeing a very dark fin I decided it was a whale, and assured Laura it would be fine!!! Not quite sure what i was thinking, but suddenly a few more fins appeared, and it became aparent that they were in fact dolphins - this time round we think they were offshore bottlenose dolpins - they were very dark, and had short noses and looked very similar to the photo above. They were a lot closer this time, and i loved having them close by, but Laura was not convinced.
It was really an amazing experience once again - you just can't beat being out in the surf with dolpins 2 weeks in a row!!!!