Orlando - Part II

Discovery Cove Day! (AKA, Valentine's Day - Carmen and Alli Style)

Nothing says Valentine's like cake and Bud Light


I'll start by saying I had my "excited" face on the ENTIRE day. This park was amazing. Carmen's family met up with us in the morning and Carmen gave us a "backstage" tour of Discovery Cove. She showed us the kitchen where they prepare meals and snacks for all 40 dolphins for the entire day.... a serious endeavor. We got to meet one of the dolphins and take a tour of the aviary. Carmen and grabbed our gear for the rest of the day and went in to the park. Discovery Cove is AMAZING! Everything is included - like our beverages and snacks and my delicious lobster sandwich lunch. We lucked out for weather too. It looked overcast and rain was in the forecast, but when we got out and about the sun was shining and it was in the low 80's. It was the perfect break from dreary Nashville this time of year. I was in awe the whole time... like how many times does one get to pet a baby ant eater?

We put on our wetsuits just in time for feeding in the ray pool. The rays were huge... way bigger than the ones at the North Carolina aquarium. I got a handful of shrimp and the rays came up and sucked them out of my hand. hehe. I'm still trying to figure out my video camera, so still pictures will have to do for now...check out the pic Carmen got of a ray coming in for the kill!

The park recently got a Nurse Shark someone had been keeping as a pet and it had outgrown their home tanks. I got to pet the dermal denticles (see, I didn't forget everything I learned in NC) and give it a piece of fish. The park doesn't have the sharks swimming around out in the snorkel reef with the visitors, but the reef has glass walls that you can snorkel right up to and see the sharks swimming around. Pretty sweet.











Of course the day wouldn't be complete without meeting Carmen's favorite dolphin Capricorn! I'm so jealous that Carmen gets to work in this paradise everyday. It was hard to pick out just a couple dolphin pictures to post because in every one of the photos I have this ridiculously huge grin on my face. It was SUCH a cool treat.

A couple pictures... me and Carmen in our *hot* wetsuits getting ready for sunshiny fun... and a couple of parrots we got to check out in the aviary. The lazy river in the park actually flows through the aviary so you can get out in the jungle with the birds and get back in to resume the float.













The end of the day we were goofing around and trying out our waterproof cameras. I miss Orlando!