Imagine yourself floating around in the warm, serene Hawaiian waters, basking in the sun. Friendly and playful bottlenose dolphins are swimming all around you. Well, swimming with dolphins is nothing like this. Although that was the picture I had in my head (I can probably thank Flipper for that), it wasn’t what I expected at all.

In real life (or at least on the day that I went), the water is cool and a bit choppy. It’s cloudy and drizzling at times. The dolphins are spinner dolphins that swim probably about 100 feet below you, so you won’t get to see them up close. That’s probably best anyway because it’s illegal to touch a dolphin and if I was close enough, I know I would be super tempted. Nonetheless, it was still an amazing sight to see. The captain takes you out on a boat, not too far away from shore. He then uses sonar to locate the pods of dolphins. I must have seen at least 200 dolphins that day (not all at once of course, because at that point, I might be more scared than excited).