Our first day in San Antonio and I decided it was time to see Sea World – there are three: Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego. Ghis dropped Morgane and I off for the day and it turned out to be good timing! It wasn’t busy at all.
The first thing we did was buy trays of fish to feed the dolphins. The edges of the pool are low so you can reach over and toss the fish into a hungry dolphin’s mouth. We loved it so much that we had to buy more food. Then more because we learned that it was the best way to get to pat the dolphins. It really isn’t the kind of experience we can have back home anyway.
Then we saw Shamu’s show – there are three orcas actually. It reminded me of when I was little and there were killer whales at the aquarium in Vancouver and we all were in love with them. Skana, I think, her name was. In this show, a trainer swam in the water with the orcas and even came out of the water balanced on the orca’s nose!
A highlight of the day for Morgane was playing on a huge climbing structure. She began climbing up the giant net, then turned to me and said, “I feel like I’m five years old again.”
She had to crawl through tubes to get from one structure to the next. By the time she came down, she was red-cheeked and thirsty.
She also got to build her own wooden planter. She was so proud of hammering it all by herself.
Later on was the show I remembered most from my visit to Sea World, San Diego, when I was a teen: the sea lion show! It was as funny as I remember. The sea lions even danced to the nutcracker. Then they read Twas the Night Before Christmas and instead of Santa coming down the chimney, a huge pinky-white walrus appeared out of nowhere!
We saw a 4D movie – a short version of The Polar Express. During the movie, we were actually squirted with water. Our seats also vibrated at times and it snowed in the theatre!
On top of that, we rode the Shamu roller coaster and fed fish to the seals. We even watched the Shamu show again, but this time it was dark and lights lit up the water. No wonder we were exhausted by the end of the day.
Ghis picked us up and we came to Madeleine’s house. She is letting us boondock in our driveway and has invited us to a Christmas gathering.
She is an amazing woman who has travelled far and wide in her van (the same year as ours!). She has a lot of great stories to tell us and Morgane has taken up amusing her cat. She is a very passionate democrat and has been working hard for the past eight years. Her van and yard are covered with political signs, which is pretty brave considering this is Texas.