Location: Cape Town
Hi. We started the morning off with my personal favorite breakfast of the trip: Bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches. Our first order of business was talking about food and how to use the kitchen when underway to prepare ourselves for cooking meals ourselves in a few days. After that, we had a boat run-through to prepare us to check the boat when we were eventually on duty on passage. For lunch, we had sausage pasta in the blistering sun. Luckily, we had our first Marine Biology Class with Meg in the saloon. We got to continue our Marine Biology class in the Two Oceans Aquarium. When we entered the aquarium, we got to go behind the scenes, which was really cool to learn about how an aquarium gathers all its fish by gathering them locally. We also got to see an unopened and unfinished South African Penguin exhibit, where we learned that this unique bird endemic to the coast of southern Africa was an endangered species said to be extinct by 2035. My favorite part of the tour, though, was going to the roof and seeing some of the largest aquarium tanks from above, including a tank with a yellow tail and ragged tooth sharks. After our behind-the-scenes tour, we were let loose in the aquarium where we could gather right about animal species in our Marine Biology Logbook. Right after the aquarium, we all went back to the boat to get ready for our night out by putting on our smart casual outfits. Going out was a lot of fun. We all went to a canteen restaurant where I had a really good medium rare steak and tried some local South African drinks. Following getting back to the ship from the canteen a lot of the students either went to bed early or went to the bow of the ship to hangout for a while.