Florida part one
Florida part two
Florida part three

This is my fourth post about our former trip to Florida. First of all I want to take this moment to thank all the people of the great Steemit communities for being so enthusiastic about my posts about Florida. I get a lot of nice comments and even have been mentioned by @OCD and @Currie , isn't that awesome....

This post is about a special occasion of which I did have written before on Steemit, but since it was a great part of our trip I continue the serie where this even just has to be in :)

When we were making the arrangements for the trip in the Netherlands my wife and kids told me that they also had made some arrangements for my birthday.Because my birthday is in August, often we are on holiday. So I often spend my birthdays with my wife and kids, which is awesome by the way.

So a day before my birthday we were at the beach , just relaxing. At the end of the day my youngest asked my wife if he could say my surprise :) He always wants to tell the things that make people happy. So my wife said he could.

He asked me to come along with him towards a jetski renting company.

He asked me if I would love to ride such a thing. And of course I told him I would love that, so he said that we were going to do that the next day. I was thrilled.

So the next day we had to be at the beach early for the Jetski ride. When we arrived things got clearer to me, we weren't only riding the jetski's , we would go on a Dolphin and manatee excursion. We would go on tour to spot Dolphin's and manatees, I was even more thrilled and was surprised about this original gift from my family for my birthday.

We first had to gear up, we put on a lifejacket and went of to the jetski's. First we could ride the jetski a bit along the coast to get used to the machines. My wife never had ride a jetski before but she enjoyed it very much. Soon she drove faster then I did hahaha. I have a little waterfear, so I didn't go that fast. (My son thought I was a P!@@Y :)

The tourguide told us that is was quiet early but he didn't was sure if we were seeing any Dolphins todat because the last few days they didn't show up.
So we had our fingers crossed.

While we were riding the waves already soon a Dolphin came by. We didn't believe our eyes. We waved at the tourguide and he went closer to take some pictures. But the feeling seeing Dolphins that close is indescribable.

After a few seconds a second Dolphin showed up, we were thrilled.

If you just see how close we could approach them. Isn't that awesome.

They were playing games with us, when we looked at the left, the Dolphin swom under the surface to the right, at the other side of us.

And after a while there was even number three.

It seems that the Dolphins themselves had a lot of fun, the came closer and closer. I did know that they were currious, but never thought this would happen.

After a while we went on to the bayside and the Dolphins left us. We did looked for manatees but we didn't saw one, but nevertheless we had a awesome experience. This was the best birthday gift I have ever had and I will never forget this special morning.

We relaxed a little more after the tour, full of energy and new impressions...

On our way back to the hotel we drove through some great streets which for us (as seen on TV haha) was typical American :)

All those mailboxes at the beginning of the terrain.

In Holland you are obligated to have such a mailbox when the postman has to walk more then 30 meters toward the door.

At a moment I thought we were in Beverly Hills, which such a cool places all around :)

Everglades

Our next stop where the everglades, the real swamp with the airboats. We decided not to take a tour on those smaller boats, we already had one at myakka park, but my attention was taken by this sign

We didn't really know what it was but we decided to go and have a look.
It turned out to be some kind of zoo-kind a thing with all sorts of animals.

It looked a bit like a hobby zoo from a amateur :) but they did have a lot of animals. In one way I felt sorry fpr those animals because it was extremely hot that day....

The otters did swim a lot, brings some cooling :)

Cute little animals

There were also a lot of Alligators in different bassins.

We were being told that some of the alligators in the zoo were captured or saved from the everglades. Some of them were quiet old, some very young..

The strangest animals in that place were the Siberian Tigers. What the !@#$ does Tigers like this doing in the hot sun of Florida... I just couldn't understand it...

This was a very old gator. You could see it at his skin and his teeth... He was very mellow :)

During our visit you could visit a show of the son of the owner which told all about Alligators, their strength... Did you know an alligator opens his mouth in the hope something flies in, and when it does it closes immediately with so much power it can rip your hand of in a blink. He demonstrated this and it was scary, I can tell you that. The nerves in the mouth of a alligator are uber-sensitive.

I learned that a Alligator always rolls on the floor or in the water when they got a pray in their mouth to try to break it.

After the demonstration he showed us a little gator with which we could take a picture.

by the look of my face you could tell it was very hot.....

Have a great day and thank you for reading !!

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