Saturday, May 31, 2014
Drinking and Cooking Stories
I’m in Seychelles and…
· I can bake anything from scratch; I make a mean
pan of granola!
· I can jump out of bed at 5:30 am and have
breakfast ready for a camp full of people by 6 am
· Kitchen duty is not my favourite duty
I was sitting down to breakfast the other morning and looked
down at my meal. I realized I had made everything; the bread, the cereal and even
the milk! Granted, mixing powder and water might not count as ‘making’ but
still…
The new five week bunch of volunteers who are studying
corals have finished up with their workshops and coral spots and they have all
passed their coral exams with flying colors. Soon they’ll be joining us ten
weekers with the survey work that’s been coming along well. We can’t wait for
their help!
While drinking on base on a Friday night, Tina and Scott
decided that they’d hike to Beau Vallon… at 1am… They took a compass with them.
On Saturday morning at 9am they trudged back into base and said that after 7
hours of hiking, they’d ended up on Secret Beach! That’s all, that’s as far as
they got; they must have been going in circles! They had to stash their stuff on
Secret Beach and swim back to base in their clothes and shoes. They then had to
get some dry bags and swim back to Secret Beach, get their stuff, and swim back
to base again. Moral of their story, don’t go hiking at 1am when you’re drunk! Greg,
Norma, Nimah and Orla managed to hike the six hours to Beau Vallon from Cap
Ternay on Saturday. Big congratulations to them for finding the path! Laughs!
On Tuesday I went with Hazel, Alice, Antonia, Haftor, Kim
and Emma to Port Launay for the last lesson of Class 5H from the International
School Seychelles. We played Bingo, Jeopardy and fish-fish-shark among other
games. It was a fun filled morning for all.
Friday night’s theme party was hosted by the Brazilian
Brothers, Adriano and Thomas. The dress code was strict – you had to wear
either yellow or green. Surprisingly everyone managed to pull it off with our
limited amount of clothing we have here! There were Brazilian drinks, treats,
music and of course dancing!
Saturday, May 24, 2014
She Sees Seashells In The Seychelles
I'm in the Seychelles
Hurrah! I've logged over 100 dives now. It's with great satisfaction as I write down each dive in my log book and watch the digits go up and up.
Despite the pleasure of racking up the number of dives, most of my dives are survey dives. Survey diving isn't all fun and games. I spend most of my time underwater, floating upside down, precariously holding a rock that I hope isn't a stone fish, looking under a measuring tape and recording centimeter by centimeter what I see on my slate.
For the most part I'm doing a LIT Survey. After rolling out a taunt line of 10 meters I have 45 minutes to inch my way along taking notes of what's directly under the tape while my buddy scans a meter on either side of the tape looking for invertebrates. My slate usually looks like this "10-9.95 ACP-BR-SA -9.87 TA-SA -9.67 PRT-MV-SA" etc.... It's not that interesting. Fortunately I've become somewhat of an expert and can complete my survey within 25mins which gives me some time to swim around and look at the fish afterwards!
I'm also trained to do a BELT Survey and when my name is next to that on the schedule I always squeal with pleasure. It's a lot more enjoyable than a LIT. My buddy and I roll out 50 meters of tape and swim in a zigzag pattern towards and away from the tape along the length of it scanning 2.5 meters on either side for coral diversity. When we see a coral we record it and can disregard it if we see it again. It's basically a checklist of what's there. It's a huge difference from doing a LIT!
On Wednesday's we have our turtle dives, where we take a break from surveying the coral reef and look for turtles. In buddy pairs we are dropped off in specific places over the reef and swim in a U shaped pattern looking for turtles. When we see one we abandon the pattern and follow it while recording its activity. "30 seconds swam north, changed direction 10 seconds swam east. Dived past 16 meters, couldn't follow" type of thing. These are nice dives to swim over the reef and look around rather than concentrate directly on the substrate.
Occasionally we get fun dives where we don't have to record any data at all and can just swim around. Actually, someone (jokingly) asked for instructions on how to do a fun dive since we get to do them so rarely. On these dives, the boys in particular go crazy! One guy took an egg with him (how he managed to kit up and do a backwards roll off the boat without breaking it I don't know) and had threatened another guy he was going to break it on his head during the dive. We were separated from him during the dive but within the last five minutes the groups met up again – unbeknown to the victim. I was witness to it all and wish I'd had an underwater video of the scene. He swam up behind him, grabbed his tank between his knees so the victim was stuck and reached up and cracked the egg on his head! It was straight out of a movie it was so shockingly funny, it was all I could do to keep my regulator in my mouth as I laughed.
- I've been
known to ask if I have snot in my eyebrows on more than one occasion
- I always
have a random patch of sun burnt skin somewhere
- I am one
with nature (this means everything I own has a bit of rat pee or gecko
poop on it)
Hurrah! I've logged over 100 dives now. It's with great satisfaction as I write down each dive in my log book and watch the digits go up and up.
Despite the pleasure of racking up the number of dives, most of my dives are survey dives. Survey diving isn't all fun and games. I spend most of my time underwater, floating upside down, precariously holding a rock that I hope isn't a stone fish, looking under a measuring tape and recording centimeter by centimeter what I see on my slate.
For the most part I'm doing a LIT Survey. After rolling out a taunt line of 10 meters I have 45 minutes to inch my way along taking notes of what's directly under the tape while my buddy scans a meter on either side of the tape looking for invertebrates. My slate usually looks like this "10-9.95 ACP-BR-SA -9.87 TA-SA -9.67 PRT-MV-SA" etc.... It's not that interesting. Fortunately I've become somewhat of an expert and can complete my survey within 25mins which gives me some time to swim around and look at the fish afterwards!
I'm also trained to do a BELT Survey and when my name is next to that on the schedule I always squeal with pleasure. It's a lot more enjoyable than a LIT. My buddy and I roll out 50 meters of tape and swim in a zigzag pattern towards and away from the tape along the length of it scanning 2.5 meters on either side for coral diversity. When we see a coral we record it and can disregard it if we see it again. It's basically a checklist of what's there. It's a huge difference from doing a LIT!
On Wednesday's we have our turtle dives, where we take a break from surveying the coral reef and look for turtles. In buddy pairs we are dropped off in specific places over the reef and swim in a U shaped pattern looking for turtles. When we see one we abandon the pattern and follow it while recording its activity. "30 seconds swam north, changed direction 10 seconds swam east. Dived past 16 meters, couldn't follow" type of thing. These are nice dives to swim over the reef and look around rather than concentrate directly on the substrate.
Occasionally we get fun dives where we don't have to record any data at all and can just swim around. Actually, someone (jokingly) asked for instructions on how to do a fun dive since we get to do them so rarely. On these dives, the boys in particular go crazy! One guy took an egg with him (how he managed to kit up and do a backwards roll off the boat without breaking it I don't know) and had threatened another guy he was going to break it on his head during the dive. We were separated from him during the dive but within the last five minutes the groups met up again – unbeknown to the victim. I was witness to it all and wish I'd had an underwater video of the scene. He swam up behind him, grabbed his tank between his knees so the victim was stuck and reached up and cracked the egg on his head! It was straight out of a movie it was so shockingly funny, it was all I could do to keep my regulator in my mouth as I laughed.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Holiday Time!
I’m on
Praslin Island and La Digue Island and…
· Everything looks like it’s from the 50’s, from our room décor to the small town
· Deserted, gorgeous beaches come standard with your holiday
· When I arrive back at camp, the five week transition will have occurred and there will be new volunteers in our camp and friends will have gone on their way
· Everything looks like it’s from the 50’s, from our room décor to the small town
· Deserted, gorgeous beaches come standard with your holiday
· When I arrive back at camp, the five week transition will have occurred and there will be new volunteers in our camp and friends will have gone on their way
I awoke with
two glorious hours to get ready before leaving and rather than being sensible
about it and packing up my bags first, I lounged about, had a coveted bowl of
cereal and chatted with Alice about why the sky is blue and other nonsense.
After faffing about we had a mere 15mins to get ready and catch the bus to the
ferry port. We rushed around like mad women throwing bits of clothes and
bottles of sunscreen into our bags and ran down the dusty road to just make the
bus. I pushed my way on and sat down with boxes of cereal and water bottles
shoved in the pockets of my bags which are hanging off my arms while sweat
drips off my earlobes. I wonder to myself why I always do this. Moral of the
story, be sensible and leave yourself time to get from point A to B when you need
it!
Alice and I
took a few days out of our volunteering schedule to take a holiday on the
islands of Praslin and La Digue. We hired bikes and while biking along the
path, going under the webs of golden orb spiders the size of my palm, I passed
a lone tortoise munching grass who was not at all bothered by me stopping to
give him a pat. I continued on my journey and marveled at the trees, flowers
and vines endemic to this island. A wild child with dread locks in his hair and
a necklace made from broken bits of shell ran through the bush.
The slow
pace of life and beauty of the Earth speaks for itself in the photos. Enjoy!
Saturday, May 10, 2014
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