Location: Iles du Salut, French Guiana
Today, we arrived in Isles du Salut; the small Island group is located about 8 miles from French Guyana, the South American mainland. They are very picturesque, covered in palm trees, and surrounded by rocky shores. The island has a lot of wildlife, including monkeys, peacocks, parrots, and capybaras. The islands were a former French prison colony. It has a small resort on it where South American tourists visit. Right after we pulled in, a large cruise ship anchored right next to us and started ferrying its passengers ashore. The students went ashore for some shore time. I stayed aboard to work on some things. I didn’t do too much today, so here’s Emma to talk about what everyone did ashore.
WHATS UPPPP! Like Nick said, today we arrived at Devils Island! Super cool place if you ask me. We had lunch on deck right when we got here around 1 pm, and it was DOPE. Allie, Jake, and Kaden made breakfast for lunch, and they killed it. Eggs are my favorite food, so it was an easy dub for me. After lunch, we had our station bill quiz with Jake. For those back home that don’t know, the station bill is this fun piece of paper that we have laminated on the wall in the saloon, as well as all of the heads that tell us, based on our watch teams, what we would do in certain scenarios such as a fire, abandon ship, and flooding. Hopefully, we all passed cause that’s kinda important info to know. After that, we had marine bio with Meg, where we started learning about coral reefs. It was really cool to learn about the type of reefs that we are very shortly going to be diving in in the Caribbean. While we were in class, we randomly felt the waves start to pick up, which seemed odd considering how chill our anchorage was. I was sitting on the freezer for the class as I typically do, so I stuck my head out the gopher hole, and what do I see…
FREAKIN MASSIVE CRUISE SHIP THE HECK IS THAT DOIN IN DEVILS ISLAND. Like the frick, there is nobody here. Anywho. Yeah, cruise ship. Yeahhhh sick. K, so after that, we all dinghied over to shore and got some time to walk around and check out the island. The first mission for most of us was to find a cold drink, which we were successful in, so that was fantastic. After that, we all split up a little and just wandered around. Frida and I searched for this “sunset spot” that Allie told us about and I don’t know if we found the exact one, but we for sure found a sick spot.
We wandered down this sorta maybe trail in the woods, and at the end was a rocky shoreline with the sun setting RIGHT in front of us. We saw a couple of turtles, too. That was pretty cool. We didn’t get to watch the whole sunset because we had to head back to Miss Vela for dinner at 6:30, but we got to watch the rest of it over at the dock, waiting for our dingy ride back, so that was pretty sweet. Jake and Allie killed dinner as well. They made Spanish rice, which is basically just a burrito bowl, and tacos are also my favorite food, so another huge dub for me. But yeah, that was kinda our day. Pretty wild to be in such a remote place like this. I had an anchor watch from 9-10 pm, and I could see lights from the mainland on the horizon (Devils Island is 8 miles off the coast of French Guyana like Nick previously said), and to be completely honest, it felt weird to see a glimpse of real civilization. So instead I just turned myself the other way and stared at the ocean horizon lol I am a solid problem solver. We are hitting the leadership challenge course tomorrow! It should be pretty fun. I’m stocked about it.
Everybody sends big hugs of love to their people back home! We’re headed to Barbados tomorrowour last real passage before island hopping in the Caribbean. We’re all pretty excited. To my family and friends back home… I LOVE YOU! I’m actually skipper in about five days, so don’t you worryyou’ll be hearing from me again REALLLLLL soon.
– Nick and Emma