We slept through the first feeding of the dolphins but that's probably a good thing. From what I heard there really were 1.000 tourists to see them at 7.30 am, whereas we were only abou 100 at the second time they got fed around 11ish. And imho that's a way better time to get up!

The cool thing is that these dolphins don't live in captivity, but are wild animals (well, not that wild obviously) who come to the shore two or three times a day to get fed. But since they only get fed about 25 % of their daily needs, they still have to hunt for fish in the sea. So it's really a pretty good balance between having an attraction for tourists and caring for animals in the wild. There was even a ten weeks old calf there, when we visited the resort. And it simply is pretty amazing if a dolphin swims within a meter from you.

A nice place to stay

The backpackers (Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort, 16.35 AUD; dorm) is very cool, btw. Probably the best backpackers I've been in in OZ so far - clean, spacious, good kitchen, reasonably priced and only ten meters from the beach.

Girls and girls

I'm generally getting on really well with the girls, but today they really annoyed me. It's not a big thing but somehow Esther and Sarah have decided that "Timo" is not a good name for me. So they are coming up with different names for me, which they think would fit me better. This is mainly because Esthers boyfriends back home is also called Timo. So she said that she can't call me Timo as well. Well, that's her problem. Among their suggestions were: Ingo, Matze, Bjoern and a few other names that I have forgotten. I thought this was bearable for some time but got tired of it quite quickly. So I told them to cut it out, but of course they didn't. Eventually I got so sick of it that I went to the beach to be alone for a bit where I met a very nice Irish girl, Ruth, and her Irish-American friend Kelly with whom I spent the next hours eating chocolate and drinking beer until the middle of the night

On the web:
Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort