Day 5 St. Thomas and Dolphin Encounter
I woke up way early today, showered and headed up to deck 10 to watch the Magic dock in St. Thomas.
the sun is rising as we pull closer to St. Thomas
Captain Tom and the other officers docking the Magic. I thought that was so cool to watch!
I called down to the room to wake the others up and then headed down too. We made our way to immigration, which was pretty painless. We had an early
excursion and had to be in Studio Sea at 7:30am anyway. We checked in for the dolphin encounter and were off the ship by 8. We got on a 1 hour ferry ride that took us to the Island of Tortola. This was a bit of a pain since Tortola is in the British Virgin Islands and St. Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands. We had to go through immigration again in Tortola. We were put in little open air busses and drove a short distance to the dolphin discovery facility. There we put our things in cubbies and were given life vests. Then, we watched a short orientation video and they took pictures of all the families posing with parrots.
this is a scanned picture
We went in groups to where the dolphins are. Our dolphins name was Calypso, he was a 12 year old male. We went in the water with him and got to play around with him touch him, learn about dolphins in general, kiss him and dance with him. It was a great experience and of course we bought all the photos they took of us and souveniers at the gift shop. Here are some pictures I took with the disposable camera:
And here are the scanned images of the kids interacting. Yeah I know... how can you NOT buy these? And they know it too, and they make you sell your soul but hey, we were on vacation so who cares right?
They gave us a lunch of cheeseburgers, hamburgers, hotdogs, fries, pasta salad, little tuna and cheese sandwiches and some pastries. After that, we went on a island tour. Our tour guide took us way up in the hills to a restaurant type place where we got a complimentary drink and stopped for photo op. You could see both the British and U.S. Virgin Island from up there and it was just breathtaking! Soooo beautiful!
view of Tortola from the bus
Then it was back to the ferry and back to St. Thomas and through immigration once again.
this was on the ferry ride back. I wouldn't mind spending some time there!
beautiful Magic docked in St. Thomas
The only thing that bothered me about this excursion is having to go through immigration all these times, which meant standing in line. It was never more then 10 minutes though so it wasn't soooo bad. But you had to take your passports along which always makes me uneasy because I worry that we will lose them. The whole dolphin encounter was awesome and my whole family enjoyed it very much.
After we got back to St. Thomas it was almost all aboard time, we had about 20 minutes to shop, so we headed to the mall right by the pier and bought us some t-shirts and a St. Thomas magnet, just a little souvenier. Then back
to the ship. We watched the Magic pull away. There were a whole bunch of passengers on deck on the Royal Caribbean ship next to us and they all cheered when our Disney horn sounded. Gave me the chills!
We got hungry and had a quick bite to eat by the Mickey pool. The kids put their bathing suits back on and swam until dinner time. We had a special moment by the aft elevator on deck 9. Kaylee and I were about to head
down to the room when in walked Chip and Dale. I took a quick picture and then much to our surprise they both squeezed in the elevator with us!! (we all know how tight those elevators can be, imagine being in there with 2 huge chipmunks!!) Kaylee was in heaven. Dale picked at Kaylee's hair on the way down, and she giggled like crazy. She could not wait to tell her dad about that!
Dinner tonight was in Lumiers again and I had some jerk pork appetizer, some gumbo seafood soup, and roasted chicken dish for entree. Dessert was some sort of White Chocolate Truffel Torte which was delicious.
Kaylee at dinner. I have to mention that she LOVES the cherries in her Shirley Temple. She told Dobi, our server the first night, and every night after that when we sat down for dinner, there was a small dish full of cherries waiting for her along with her drink! She always dumped them all in her cup!
After dinner, we went to Shutters to pick up some pictures, and then had more taken around the atrium and just wandered around the ship for a bit.
Ran into this silly guy...
We were all exhausted so we headed to our stateroom early. There was no
show we wanted to watch tonight, so we just all put on our pajamas and got in bed and watched a movie. Towel animal tonight was a bunny (I think!?)
Tomorrow... Day at Sea and character breakfast.