Eve pets a dolphin.
We began by swimming down an underground river, from the entrance of Xcaret to somewhere in the middle of the grounds. The river was lit by shafts of natural light, shining down from above. The swim lasted about half an hour, which gives you an idea of the enormous scale of Xcaret.
We then visited some animal habitats. We went underground to a bat cave, walked inside a butterfly sanctuary, and saw large cats (a jaguar and a puma?) mostly just sleeping. Later in the day we also saw the aquarium, huge turtles, a crocodile, and, not part of any display, two big lizards, which made Eve very happy (she thinks lizards are cute).
But the highlight of the day was swimming with the dolphins. We hadn't the time or the money for both of us to partake in it (it was expensive & cash-only), so kind Jin insisted that Eve be the one to do it, since she had been excited about the prospect for so long.
After that, we went snorkeling. The beach was
beautiful, and many people were just sitting there
enjoying it, even though there was so much Xcaret
to explore. The fish were nice, but didn't compare
to the ones in Hanauma Bay, Hawaii. However the
snorkeling was interesting for a moment because the
two following unrelated events occurred in this
order:
(1) Jin told Eve to get out of the water.
(2) Jin started excitedly pointing down at something under
the water, which Eve couldn't see.
This led Eve to imagine that Jin was telling her to get
out because there was a shark below her. She screamed
and flailed wildly. It turned out that Jin was just
pointing at some pretty fish.
In the evening, we went to Xcaret's ball stadium where the type of ballgame described to us at Chichén Itzá was played (with some minor differences).
After the game, quite a performance was put on by Xcaret singers, dancers, and doers of crazy deeds.
Eve pets a dolphin.
The dolphins jump over the swimmers. It was a tiny bit
unnerving.
The "official" picture Xcaret took of Eve with a dolphin.
This is actually a photograph of that photograph, since
we don't have a scanner here. Notice the scratch marks
on the dolphin's head. All the dolphins have such marks
all over their bodies. We were told that they bite
each other when they play, when they fight, and when
they're in love. It, of course, reminded us of
Alex, who
similarly likes to bite all his friends.
The guide had us put our heads under the water to listen
to the dolphin's sonar, which the dolphin used when the guide
threw a ring for him to fetch. Jin also recorded some
dolphin sounds using
our digital camera. You can hear their rapid clicking noises
and their squeals above the chatter of
the people.
This dolphin liked to have his tummy rubbed.
Feeding time.
How 'bout a little scratch under that fin?
The dolphins certainly stole the show today, but we hate to leave out all the other animals we saw. There was a large cat (a puma, in Jin's opinion) who briefly arose from his slumber, a fish with a funny rectangular head who was as interested in us as we were in him, a butterfly which we had to exercise extreme patience in order to photograph, a man putting caterpillars on plants to stock the butterfly sanctuary, a crab hiding behind a brain-like sea creature with its claw protruding, causing quite a frightening effect, baby chickens, just hatched, a fish that would be easy to step on, a crocodile and its smaller iguana cousin, bats (no flash, just long exposure), and a turtle being measured (so that they know how much soup they can make, Jin teases).
