Tortured Starfish and the Chamber of Fish...

(I apologise now for photo blog overload)

Today was the kind of day that life is all about. Going out as a family, having fun and enjoying ourselves. Of course everyone has their limits, and today was well balanced between having fun and seeing interesting things, and not going overboard and doing too much. That can be dangerous where Tobi is concerned! We probably pushed out limits as far as we could without Tobi snapping. Of course he had the occasional squeal (THE squeal, how I hate thee!) in frustration at not being able to run off and jump in the ‘bath’ with all the fish, stingrays, turtles and sharks, but that was for his own good.

Yes, we went to AQWA or by its older and more sensical name, Underwater World. There we were able to see (and damage) all sorts of marine life. The first couple of tanks resulted in only a slight nod of interest from Tobes, they were nothing compared to Pa’s fish. But then we got to the turtle. He stood at the nice ground level pool, and tried to feed the turtle with his fingers before stooping down to look through the window at him. He loved that turtle!

Through the danger zone, full of dangerous, but stationary animals we came to the place where Tobi could do some real damage… the petting pool (or as I would call it, the circle of torture). Here children gather and are allowed to reach into the water, there is nothing in the pool that can hurt them. But no one thought about those poor starfish, stingrays and fish in there! First Tobi was content with just splashing the water onto anyone who came nearby, but then he found the joys of thumping starfish. He was quickly whisked away, much to his distress, fortunately Tay Tay is far more gentle, but it was difficult to find a place in amongst the throng of children, and even when she did it was hard to find a starfish that wasn’t already being tortured.

Luckily Tobi’s screams of protest did not last too long as there was a great distraction nearby, the seal enclosure!! At first it appears as a pool, and the seal would occasionally surface to breathe. Tobi was slightly interested, but the seal would only be visible for moments at a time. But as you followed the path down and around you came to a level below the decking where you could see underwater into the enclosure. This really perked Tobi up, especially as the seal was playing. He would glide across the window, smiling and winking at the spectators, before gliding lazily off around the back of the island and out of view.

"Here ‘e comes!" Tobi would yell, more out of wanting the seal to come back, rather than because he actually saw the seal coming. But sure enough the seal would come back, doing barrel rolls, surfacing for breath and coming back down to dance in front of the people. Tobi was entertained for a solid 15 minutes. But the trump card was yet to come.

Today he learnt a new word. He always liked fish, but today was something special. Tobi came face to face with a shark. I was curious to see how he would react. I imagined that he would be afraid, he has what seems to be a natural in built fear of scary animals, such as geese, and plastic crocodiles, so I assumed when he saw a big shark near the window he would be in awe, but also cowering in fear, such as at the Red Bull air race. It was not so, he was up, yelling "shark!" and banging on the glass while he stared into its eyes through the seemingly thin glass, with no concern at all. It sent chills down my spine, but he was eager for more.

After two shots on the underwater carousel we left and went and had some lunch in a café in Hilary’s then we went down and joined the locals (mostly elderly bootleather lying out to dry..Timmi was most tramatised!) for a dip in the ocean where Taylah befriended a little girl after two minutes (as she does) and the Tobester enjoyed himself splashing and eyeing off any small boy who owned a boat as if he wanted to club them, take the boat and make a run for it!

(Excuse the look on my face, I was trying to get Tobi to do his "cheesy grin")

So all in all a great day, I’m so not looking forward to Timmi going back to work on Monday, we are going to miss him so much :(

Love you Tim! Thanks for a wonderful 3 weeks :)

PS. I do love my girl child too! I promise! There aren't many photos of her because she was busy flitting around Underwaterworld with her new digi cam snapping away!