My Fitbit thinks Toronto time, six hours behind where I am, and I have no idea how to change it. I was hoping my app would talk to Fitbit and get it straightened out but that hasn’t happened.  So in addition to my body’s jet lag I   have to cope with Fitbit’s laggard ways. 

I slept, crashed actually, but I don’t know when, on Monday night after a 30-hur day, 16 spent I flying.  The ship sailed at 5 to position us for the first excursion. We left a wake-up call but it didn’t happen   My first awareness of time and my body arrived with June’s gentle announcement:

“It’s 5 to 7, Bettyjane.”

I haven’t introduced you to my travel buddy for this trip, June, whom I met on the Big Trip last year. When she found out that I had booked a cruise as a single to Easter Island she asked if she could join me. Yes, indeed! We have a balcony and a butler, thanks to being a twosome. She’s not a sight-unseen roommate. won in a lottery.  We had time to get to know each other on board the Insignia and we have corresponded since we parted and I have benefitted by her (American) travel agent.  She is younger than I but we share the same mobility issues, for different reasons, so our capacity and strength for excursions are limited and our tolerance of each other’s weaknesses very sympathetic.

I began tired and June was too, not quite as jet-lagged (about 3 hours) but equally wiped.  We had to skip breakfast so as not to miss the tender going ashore in time to catch a boat. We couldn’t take food with us, except inside us.  I grabbed a banana and tossed the skin into a bin as I flashed my key-card, the passport to everything on and off the ship. Weariness and hunger, jet lag and disorientation – all, all fell away as I experienced one of the most magical boat-rides in my life.  We went dolphin- gazing.

Also gawping and gawking.   Spinner dolphins,.  We watched groups of them swimming in formation for fun (synchronized swimming was inspired by them); doing back flips and somersaults and spinning: straight up out of the water and literally spinning, up to 7 or 8 twists in the air, like a ballet dancer doing jetés but without a leg in the air.  Poetry in motion.  I f I were a poet like Gerard Manley Hopkins, I could describe what I saw and what I felt.  Awe. Joy. Glee. Gratitude.

About the size and weight of an adult male human, playful and promiscuous, a spinner dolphin is among the smallest of the dolphin family. Everything I know bout dolphins I learned on Tuesday from Dr. Michael Poole, our laid-back, barefoot guide who has spent over 30 years.