Merry Christmas! Actually, it's Christmas Eve where most of you are reading this, but that's another story. We spent Christmas Eve doing what everyone should ... we went swimming with dolphins! Actually, I only got in the water briefly since it was cold, we had no fins, and the rest of the equipment was a bit on the old side. I took advantage of the time to get photographs of these amazing creatures. This is my postcard shot from the day. Right place and right time:)

The day was spent on board a beautiful sailboat just winding our way through the Bay of Islands in search of pods of Common and Bottlenose dolphins. There are hundreds of them living in this area and it is a popular tourist destination as a result of it. We generally try to avoid these areas, but ... swimming with dolphins!!!!! Did I mention how amazing these creatures are?:)

Besides the dolphin swims and photo opportunities, we hiked on one of the islands while they prepared a nice barbeque lunch right on board the ship. All in all, a very good day, and there are lots of photos to document it!

After we came back into shore, we met up with our friend Marc from Rarotonga. He is staying at a hostel in Paihia and is going to spend Christmas with us. We're going to do a combination traditional English and American Christmas dinner, except with a roasted chicken instead of turkey. Somehow the Kiwi's haven't figured out that turkeys are relatively easy to raise for food and that they should be very inexpensive. We looked at getting a turkey and it would have cost us almost a day's budget for the bird alone:) It all tastes like chicken anyway doesn't it?

Tomorrow, Marc and I are finally going to get to dive the Rainbow Warrior. We've been trying to do this for a week, but winds and Christmas have kept us out of the water. The water temperature here is 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 F) so it's similar to diving at home. No drysuit, but a 7mm wetsuit. This will be a good reminder of what diving is like in the Pacific Northwest..

After we finish tomorrow we're heading to Auckland to pick up Scott Fox very early Tuesday morning. So will begin the next layer of our adventure.

Stay tuned,

Eric & Val