Day 6

Did we seriously swim with dolphins?? This was such a cool day for me.

We drive up north to Lovina just so we can hang out with the dolphins, and we stay at the strangest hotel I've ever stayed in - it's a dolphin and wildlife resort. It's already dark when we arrive so we don't get a chance to look around, but I have to say, it's almost better to experience it in the darkness. As we're walking to the hotel restaurant for a late dinner, the sidewalk in front of us is all we can see and suddenly we HEAR the dolphins. We can maybe see a faint outline of them diving gracefully in and out of the water, but mostly we can just hear the splashing and the exchange of squeaks and whistles. I think I could have listened to that all night.

The next morning we woke up to a little morning show, followed by our swim. It's just as cool as you expect it to be! At first I was worried that I wouldn't get any contact with them (it's a big pool), but they're actually really friendly. At some points, TOO friendly. There were a couple of times when I had them both wrapped around me in a big pretzel. They seemed to prefer me to Eric; In fact, they didn't pay much attention to him unless I was out of the water.

In addition to the dolphins, we got to see deer, otters, turtles, sharks, snakes, alligators, crocodiles, monkeys, cockatoos, and bear cats - all at our hotel.

After Lovina, we drove back down south to Ubud, the cultural center of Bali, where we checked into our last (and favorite) hotel - The Tegal Sari. Here's the view of the lush rice fields from our patio.

And, of course, the lovely pool.