Cautious Adventurers

Erin and I may be the most cautious adventure travelers to traverse Africa. Neither of us is particularly daring when it comes to risk-taking adventure sports. If you've ever swum in the ocean with Erin or me you probably know that we both have an aversion to swimming with ocean critters. We've probably watched too many Discovery Channel Shark Weeks.

On our first snorkeling trip in Lamu Erin didn't even get off the boat (though she did assume the role of the great provider by catching a fish for lunch). And I made it into the water for about 15 minutes before I started getting visions of being eaten by a shark and swam back to the boat.

So this morning when we embarked on a dolphin tour off the coast of Zanzibar I don't think either of us actually thought we would make it into the water. We were the only ones on our boat to spend $2 extra for the life preservers (and no, they don't come standard with boating in Kenya or Tanzania). When our boat pulled up next to the dolphins everyone else aboard hopped off and started chasing after the dolphins... Erin and I stayed put on the boat. But by the third jump into the dolphin colony Erin and I finally got up the nerve to dive in with the dolphins.

It was AMAZING. You only see a few dolphins on the surface, but if you look down you can see huge bunches of them swimming along just beneath the surface. I think I lasted less than a minute in the water -- enough to see it, check it off of my life list of experiences and scuttle back to the safety of the boat. Erin lasted about 10 seconds longer than I did before hopping back into the boat. But the important part is that we both SWAM WITH DOLPHINS!

Erin keeps telling me that we're going to go shark-cage diving in Cape Town ... we'll see if either of us makes it into the cage...