Akaroa and the dumb dolphin

East of Christchurch lays the town of Akaroa. On Google earth you can clearly see it's a giant ancient volcano in the sea. That must have been a really rather large bang.
It’s a very green area with lots of hills, sheep, bays and coves. Akaroa is an old French settlement, street names and family names remind the visitor of its origins. (It is said that if the French settlers’ boat would have reached New Zealand just two weeks, just before James Cook, the Islands would have been under French influence).
We came here to swim with dolphins, the Hector dolphins to be exact.In the water I hold Emmanuelle and we turn round and round, she extends her arm and a dolphin follows her hand not further away than 10 cms. After spinning long enough to make us sick, we swim for about an hour with them. The captain sees us turn blue with hypothermia and decides to call it a day. Cruising back, we have a couple of dolphins riding the bow wave. Now, Now, the Hector dolphin, unlike the Dusky dolphin, is not known for its acrobatics but somehow they wanted us to have a show. They jump up in front of the boat, (the boat is doing about 30 kph) quite close actually… really close... too close. I see a Dolphin jumping out of the water just in from of the boat, Emmanuelle takes a picture and realizes the particular dolphin made a mistake and says: Uh-oh! The dolphin crashes against the boat and Emmanuelle’s foot with a loud bang. That stupid animal miscalculated its jump and must have hurt itself. The Hector dolphin is almost extinct and now we know why. We really enjoyed this day!