Location: San Blas
This morning, I woke everyone up by playing a lovely tune on the ship’s guitar. I’ve never played guitar, so most of the noise that woke people up was from me laughing at myself. We had yogurt and granola bowls for breakfast, which is always a hit on Vela. Some locals from shore paddled over to sell bracelets, bags, bandanas, etc., so now everyone is rocking their matching local gear. After cleanup, we busted out the lab equipment on board to get an idea of what we wanted to do for our next oceanography research project. We all had a lot of fun learning how the different instruments worked. After all that Jake, Ben, and Maya L cheffed up some barbecue chicken bowls with some rice and veggies on the side and it was delicious despite the salties complaints on the aftermath of the rice pan.
We got underway to our next island in San Blas, which was about a 3-hour motor with the blessing from Mac of not having to wear the PFDs. Unfortunately, this lovely day was slightly overshadowed by our first marine bio exam but it’s okay. We all feel pretty confident. When we finished the exam, everyone headed back on deck to see all the different islands we were passing along the way. A bunch of us headed up to the bowsprit to get the best view while doing bow watch as we pulled into our next anchorage. The group’s morale was very high when we dropped anchor because that meant we got to take our first swim off the boat for what felt like forever. The water was unbelievable, and everyone was just having a blast. Then we got the news that we were going to head to the beach for the afternoon, so everyone got their stuff and jumped in the dinghies. The little island we went to was so beautiful, and we had so much fun running around the beach and, of course, doing some chicken fights in the water. Ben relieved Jake and Maya of their sous chef duties so they could hang out with us while he cooked dinner to bring to the beach. He gave us some first-class delivery service for our dinghy Tia, and we ate pesto pasta and vegetables on the beach. As I’m writing this, we are lying on the sand, watching the stars, and listening to some music to end this amazing day.