Honolulu, Hawaii 16.6.-26.6.2011, Day 7

Day 7 was devoted to Sea Life Park where I'd get to realise my long-term dream of getting into the water with a dolphin. We had booked our animal encounters online beforehand - Tiina would take part in a Sea Lion Discovery Swim while my thing was called Dolphin Encounter. Neither was cheap ($90 and $100, respectively) and the dolphin thing wasn't worth that much money, to be honest, but I did finally get to touch  a dolphin and be in the water with one so I'll leave it at that. The sea lion thing was a bit better in that you got to do more stuff for the money you paid.

Anyway, we caught the same bus as we'd done when we went to Hanauma Bay earlier, only this time we went all the way to the last stop. The driver was GREAT! He basically decided to work as a guide of sorts and talked into the microphone all the way to Sea Life Park! At one point, the scenery got breathtakingly beautiful, and so he decided to stop the bus and let everyone get out for pictures! He really didn't have to do that since it was just a regular bus, so it was really good and we all really appreciated what he did for us.





After taking the pictures, we soon arrived at Sea Life Park, got our wristbands for our animal encounters and got in.  The place is completely outdoors and it's quite small - so small that I, in fact, was a bit disappointed. I didn't particularly enjoy the animal shows, either, because they all involved people cheering the animals, clapping their hands to very loud music and shouting "ooooooh" and "aaaaaaah" after everything they'd done. That's not my idea of how you make animals feel safe and I was quite appalled, actually. That's not how it's done in Finland at all even though I realise that maybe keeping for example dolphins in captivity for performance purposes is never a good idea, no matter the country where it's done. Still, the American way horrifies me and I just felt very sad for the animals. The loud music was horrible! For example, a very small penguin walks in front of a huge audience with, say, a Bon Jovi song playing very loud in the background, and everyone (apart from me, heh) is clapping their hands so that the noise is very much disturbing. I can't even imagine what's going through that poor penguin's mind, and they're made to do it every day. Just horrible. And the same can be said about the dolphin shows - they were just horrible. If there has to be music, can't it be something very quiet and soft instead of stuff like AC/DC...God, it really wasn't my thing at all and I just felt like releasing all the animals there and then.




Tiina was in the water with these two.



Me with a dolphin. I also bought three official photos after this, which cost $40 extra. I got to kiss the dolphin, too, which was so nice :). The dolphin's skin was REALLY thick and you could guess how powerful her muscles were by just touching her skin. Very rubbery and hard, too.

The poor penguin :(.



Once we got back to Waikiki, we went to get some souvenirs and other stuff we wanted to bring home with us, like muumuus (Hawaiian dresses), towels etc. I loved the shop called ABC where they sold all these souvenirs and other things! I could've bought basically everything they had on offer :D!

Comments

  1. OMG, the pictures are gorgeous! It looks like a paradise :) You were lucky to be able to visit such exotic (to us, Europeans) place! :)

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  2. gorgeous photos... We swum with dolphins in Mexico and it was amazing... They are so beautiful xx

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