Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Dolphin Beach Villas in North Bali for a swim with the Dolphin
Wild Dolphin Resort a great night at the flips…
You too can do this at Bali dolphin Villas in North Bali Indonesia
Dolphin Beach in Bali is becoming famous like Tangaloomo for swimming with the Dolphins
IT MIGHT not always be appropriate but we love feeding our fauna.
To have close contact with a creature which spends most of its life fending for itself in an alien, mysterious, often dangerous world, can be exciting and memorable.
So when an utterly wild inshore bottlenose dolphin, its silver skin shining like burnished pewter, ventures into water too shallow to completely cover its body to take a fish from your hand, that's a great experience.
"You don't expect to be that close. You have expectations, from looking at documentaries which have taken years to make, about looking at wildlife at close quarters. But this is the real thing," says Catherine McGee, a tourist from Carlow, Ireland.
Straight after her close encounter, under lights off the beach at Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort , Ms McGee's verdict is: "It was really lovely. It was very, very gentle. There was something very calming about it."
Catherine's friend, Fergal Davis, from Kildair adds: "It's raw nature. It was nice being so close – seeing exactly the scratch marks on its body, the rows of teeth in the slim jaw."
At Tangalooma, just over an hour's fast ferry ride from a Brisbane River jetty, feeding those individual dolphins which deign to visit has become a hugely popular nightly event. Marine biologist Mark Jenkins knows every dolphin by the characteristics of their dorsal fins.
"In the past seven years the dolphins have failed to appear on only five nights – when conditions were atrocious and guests would not have wanted to paddle into the water. We've not had a no-show for 18 months or two years," he says.
As feeding progresses, Mr Jenkins maintains an informative commentary as onlookers watch from rows of seating on the jetty.
The wild ones have brought their human friends presents – of octopus and squid. In one case, a 1.5m-long eel. A 2½-year old dolphin named Silhouette regularly arrives with a puffer fish and proceeds to toss it in the air. Another sometimes brings a stick to throw. In 1992, a female named Beauty and her two calves – Tinkerbell and Bobo – were the first to regularly appear by the floodlit jetty.
"Later that year another mother came with her calf, then Freddy and Echo joined in 1993."
Each night, staff record observations about the sleek visitors: the directions from which they appear, how and with whom they socialise, and any marks, such as the state of healing of injuries, including shark bites.
With about 10 dolphins now visiting, a protocol is well established.
The visitors pair up, moving into knee-deep water in five lanes.
More than 100 guests of all ages queue on the beach as staff explain the procedure.
They wash their hands in a disinfectant solution to remove sunscreen and any other chemicals which might pollute the water, and are shown how to hold the fish.
"The choice of fish is the dolphins' own," explains Mr Jenkins. "We tested five different species and they spat out the ones they didn't like. They chose high quality herring."
When two dolphins are awaiting food, fish are handed to them simultaneously, so one animal is not jealous of the other.
It's tempting to reach out to stroke or pat a dolphin, but human hands are never allowed to touch.
Individuals occasionally disappear to catch fish for themselves under the moored vessels and jetty, returning, as much as anything, for the human contact. Echo, a 15-year-old male, loves attention the most and always takes first place in the "Hollywood lane" closest to the gallery.
There he shows off – on this evening lifting himself out of the water, pivoting on his stomach and waving his tail and fins, with that familiar dolphin smile on his face.
He often looks at his audience and regularly displays his distinctive signature whistle.
Mr Jenkins explains feeding is strictly controlled so that no animal receives more than a tenth of its daily diet.
"They display a lot of natural behaviour," he said. "When we've approached them in the wild, they have built up so much trust in humans, they behave as if we weren't there. We've seen them courting and mating, fishing, playing and teaching their babies."
Ms McGee notes: "It's obvious from the care and attention of the staff that the whole feeding show is genuinely done with the dolphins put first."
For Lois Muliana and her son, Alwyn, 8, from Jakarta, Indonesia, feeding the dolphins is "exciting" and "very calming and gentle" at the same time. Alwyn thinks it is so good he wants to go back and do it again.
Sand safari
Tangalooma visitors enjoy tobogganing down The Desert dunes, writes Philip Hammond
From the lip of the largest sand dune in Tangalooma Desert, the all-terrain bus and people around it look tiny.
The narrow strip of Masonite, lightly scrubbed with board wax, also seems small as you kneel, then lie down on it, remembering always to keep elbows up and the front of the board clear of the surface.
Then, abruptly, you're accelerating down the sand blow. The sound is the hiss of friction. There's no need to steer. Just keep as much of your body as possible off the sand as you hurtle down 70m and out towards that bus.
It takes maybe 10 seconds, and the good riders somehow manage to go faster and further.
On this day, a couple of Taiwanese tourists ignored the basic rule, ploughing grooves down the flawless slope with their elbows as they made a slow-motion descent. Others tried direction adjustments at speed and crashed – rolling to an undignified stop, covered in sand.
But everyone went back for more, stepping into footprints in the direct line back to the top.
A Japanese film crew, all heavy smokers, once pleaded with staff at the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort to be allowed to access the top of the dune by helicopter. After puffing and panting their way up once, they were prepared to pay anything. But The Desert is a national park and there's no easy way up.
From the Tangalooma Resort, the Desert Safari Tour is a popular experience package, especially for overseas tourists who have probably never been driven on an unsealed road before.
The bus lurches and rolls along the sand road through bushland. Children laugh and cheer as it motors down Death Valley and through a locked gate into the 46ha sand expanse which is The Desert.
Most of the passengers were game for at least three toboggan runs. Some of the more energetic youngsters, like Kyra Wilton-Hawkins, 10, of Karalee, managed more.
"Tobogganing is cool," she said. "It's good fun."
Magical encounters ... tourists feed a group of wild dolphins at the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort near Brisbane.
You too can do this at Bali dolphin Villas in North Bali Indonesia
Dolphin Beach in Bali is becoming famous like Tangaloomo for swimming with the Dolphins
IT MIGHT not always be appropriate but we love feeding our fauna.
To have close contact with a creature which spends most of its life fending for itself in an alien, mysterious, often dangerous world, can be exciting and memorable.
So when an utterly wild inshore bottlenose dolphin, its silver skin shining like burnished pewter, ventures into water too shallow to completely cover its body to take a fish from your hand, that's a great experience.
"You don't expect to be that close. You have expectations, from looking at documentaries which have taken years to make, about looking at wildlife at close quarters. But this is the real thing," says Catherine McGee, a tourist from Carlow, Ireland.
Straight after her close encounter, under lights off the beach at Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort , Ms McGee's verdict is: "It was really lovely. It was very, very gentle. There was something very calming about it."
Catherine's friend, Fergal Davis, from Kildair adds: "It's raw nature. It was nice being so close – seeing exactly the scratch marks on its body, the rows of teeth in the slim jaw."
At Tangalooma, just over an hour's fast ferry ride from a Brisbane River jetty, feeding those individual dolphins which deign to visit has become a hugely popular nightly event. Marine biologist Mark Jenkins knows every dolphin by the characteristics of their dorsal fins.
"In the past seven years the dolphins have failed to appear on only five nights – when conditions were atrocious and guests would not have wanted to paddle into the water. We've not had a no-show for 18 months or two years," he says.
As feeding progresses, Mr Jenkins maintains an informative commentary as onlookers watch from rows of seating on the jetty.
The wild ones have brought their human friends presents – of octopus and squid. In one case, a 1.5m-long eel. A 2½-year old dolphin named Silhouette regularly arrives with a puffer fish and proceeds to toss it in the air. Another sometimes brings a stick to throw. In 1992, a female named Beauty and her two calves – Tinkerbell and Bobo – were the first to regularly appear by the floodlit jetty.
"Later that year another mother came with her calf, then Freddy and Echo joined in 1993."
Each night, staff record observations about the sleek visitors: the directions from which they appear, how and with whom they socialise, and any marks, such as the state of healing of injuries, including shark bites.
With about 10 dolphins now visiting, a protocol is well established.
The visitors pair up, moving into knee-deep water in five lanes.
More than 100 guests of all ages queue on the beach as staff explain the procedure.
They wash their hands in a disinfectant solution to remove sunscreen and any other chemicals which might pollute the water, and are shown how to hold the fish.
"The choice of fish is the dolphins' own," explains Mr Jenkins. "We tested five different species and they spat out the ones they didn't like. They chose high quality herring."
When two dolphins are awaiting food, fish are handed to them simultaneously, so one animal is not jealous of the other.
It's tempting to reach out to stroke or pat a dolphin, but human hands are never allowed to touch.
Individuals occasionally disappear to catch fish for themselves under the moored vessels and jetty, returning, as much as anything, for the human contact. Echo, a 15-year-old male, loves attention the most and always takes first place in the "Hollywood lane" closest to the gallery.
There he shows off – on this evening lifting himself out of the water, pivoting on his stomach and waving his tail and fins, with that familiar dolphin smile on his face.
He often looks at his audience and regularly displays his distinctive signature whistle.
Mr Jenkins explains feeding is strictly controlled so that no animal receives more than a tenth of its daily diet.
"They display a lot of natural behaviour," he said. "When we've approached them in the wild, they have built up so much trust in humans, they behave as if we weren't there. We've seen them courting and mating, fishing, playing and teaching their babies."
Ms McGee notes: "It's obvious from the care and attention of the staff that the whole feeding show is genuinely done with the dolphins put first."
For Lois Muliana and her son, Alwyn, 8, from Jakarta, Indonesia, feeding the dolphins is "exciting" and "very calming and gentle" at the same time. Alwyn thinks it is so good he wants to go back and do it again.
Sand safari
Tangalooma visitors enjoy tobogganing down The Desert dunes, writes Philip Hammond
From the lip of the largest sand dune in Tangalooma Desert, the all-terrain bus and people around it look tiny.
The narrow strip of Masonite, lightly scrubbed with board wax, also seems small as you kneel, then lie down on it, remembering always to keep elbows up and the front of the board clear of the surface.
Then, abruptly, you're accelerating down the sand blow. The sound is the hiss of friction. There's no need to steer. Just keep as much of your body as possible off the sand as you hurtle down 70m and out towards that bus.
It takes maybe 10 seconds, and the good riders somehow manage to go faster and further.
On this day, a couple of Taiwanese tourists ignored the basic rule, ploughing grooves down the flawless slope with their elbows as they made a slow-motion descent. Others tried direction adjustments at speed and crashed – rolling to an undignified stop, covered in sand.
But everyone went back for more, stepping into footprints in the direct line back to the top.
A Japanese film crew, all heavy smokers, once pleaded with staff at the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort to be allowed to access the top of the dune by helicopter. After puffing and panting their way up once, they were prepared to pay anything. But The Desert is a national park and there's no easy way up.
From the Tangalooma Resort, the Desert Safari Tour is a popular experience package, especially for overseas tourists who have probably never been driven on an unsealed road before.
The bus lurches and rolls along the sand road through bushland. Children laugh and cheer as it motors down Death Valley and through a locked gate into the 46ha sand expanse which is The Desert.
Most of the passengers were game for at least three toboggan runs. Some of the more energetic youngsters, like Kyra Wilton-Hawkins, 10, of Karalee, managed more.
"Tobogganing is cool," she said. "It's good fun."
Magical encounters ... tourists feed a group of wild dolphins at the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort near Brisbane.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Swim with the Dolphins ...CLICK HERE NOW
YouTube - Chele's Adventures in Bali - Swimming with ...
Amana & Chele are in Bali & decide to swim with dolphins ...
Hide video - 8min -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y0_GeY7B40
Amana & Chele are in Bali & decide to swim with dolphins ...
Hide video - 8min -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y0_GeY7B40