Dolphins and Lemurs: Oh boy!

by Laurel

So, today was a kid day. Yahoo! We decided to go to Aqualandia and Mundo Mar, but Aqualandia (waterpark) was closed so it was just a Mundo Mar day (FIY, Mundo Mar is Ocean World in Spanish). We were signed up for a dolphin "experience". You apparently learn a few commands and make the dolphins do what you asked. So we got to Mundo Mar, and it's like "OMG. We got ourselves into this awesomeness?". There was a large flamingo enclosure near the entrance (which reminded me of the SF Zoo) and the flamingos were all fluffed up and happy. Typical, they had five plates of seeds in the enclosure! Most of the local birds were snacking on the plates, but when a flamingo came, they all flew away. So we walked along and checked out cool outdoor and indoor enclosures. The one that fascinated me was the meerkats.  They had a short topless enclosure that was outside. The meerkats were standing on thick logs higher than the enclosure! I was surprised one didn't jump out onto my shorts.

I suggested that we walk around more, so we did, and then we came to this lemur house where kids were going in the cage and the staff were taking pictures. We waited in a line (with lemurs trying to swing onto our shoulders) and finally our turn came. Bryce quotes: "I didn't even need seed, and this lemur came swinging onto my shoulder like a parrot". One came to me too, but after the staff took a picture. The lemur (which I mentally named Joe) grabbed my hand and looked at me all weird. Joe's hands were cold and clammy. I don't know why it felt cool.
 
So we walked around more, checking out other cool animals, and we came to the scheduled place where we would meet the dolphins. This really annoying song was playing on the speakers- "Mundo Mar, where animals are rock stars!"- which made me a little upset. For such an awesome park, they should have a better theme song. I learned that it was the starting song for the dolphin show, so we took seats and watched really amazing trainers do stuff with dolphins.

They were really good, and Bryce kept on commenting "I wanna do this when I grow up!".

After another hour, it was time for our dolphin "experience". We had to change into bathing suits, but I was really shy, so I had to wait for all the other women to evacuate the one-room changing room. Then we got on wetsuits and met the trainers. We were training with two dolphins: Camino and Frera. We had the dolphins jump over us, and each "group" of two learned different hand signals. Dad learned that waggling your fingers meant "Sing". That didn't sound pretty. Me and Bryce learned that turning around in a circle with one hand up meant "Turn". Camino (my training dolphin) kept on turning even when I put the attention signal up. Frera stopped when Bryce did. After more photos, we climbed out and changed again. It was really fun!