Other posts on this trip: 10 Years Married!, Mexico’s Croco Cun Zoo.

The two outings we’ve done on this trip have both been animal centered because H is a deep animal lover. Like, owns several vet doctor’s kits, loves Doc McStuffins, treats pretend animals, and has been making us play “water hospital,” a game she invented, in the pool through this entire trip. So yesterday it was the Croco Cun Zoo, and this morning she and I swam with the dolphins at Delphinus Puerto Morelos.

(Rules of Water Hospital:

• 2 players–one doctor, one ambulance driver.
• Must be across from each other in the pool.
• Ambulance driver must call the doctor to announce an injured horse/porcupine/crab/jaguar, load the injured animal onto a pretend bed with wheels, put it in the pretend ambulance, pretend drive it across the pool to the doctor.
• Doctor will ask the animal’s name–it must be alliteration with the kind of animal–then give an exam, apply topical medicine or a shot. This is the doctor’s choice.
• Bandage the animal. 
• Pretend to throw it over the wall of the pool to “set it free.”)

Since Adam has a fractured foot, I took H into the water. This is not usually my turf. I am built for land. I am not graceful, or poised, or even dignified in the water, and I’m not a terrible good swimmer. But meeting real live dolphins was at stake, so I took my awkward self into the water so H could basically make that giant grin in the photo up top. Worth it.

We learned to splash the dolphins, and how to engage them for tricks like belly rubs and tail splashing. Then we left the standing platform to swim out in the enclosure with our dolphin, whose name I unfortunately can’t pronounce or spell. But she was absolutely lovely, and H held on to me while she swam all around us and let us pet her.

Then it was time for hugs and kisses!

I highly recommend this if you’re ever in Mexico. They have more than one location, but this was next door to our hotel. I’d read a lot of reviews of the company, and other than extremely high prices for the photos (and they weren’t kidding on that one), it was high praise for the staff and the experience. Totally agree, this was a great memory for her. She asked to bring one of the photos to school for show and tell (which her school doesn’t actually have, but maybe I can figure something out).