Location: Bequia, St. Vincent's and the Grenadines
A day, once again, filled with diving! This finally ended the hiatus of annoying yet admired, protected water laws on our previous islands. Bequia, our home for the next couple of nights, welcomed us with a beautiful dive site called Devil’s Table. An incredible reef dabbled its way down the ocean floor to about 60 ft. How convenient since that is the maximum depth for the Scubas-In-Training who FINISHED their dive course today. We’ve been told the diving picks up a lot from here on out, and we are all looking forward to all the wonders we will see! It’ll be a nice change all diving together as *official* scuba-certified divers. Bigger, deeper, and cooler stuff to come! And hopefully, we’ll have some pictures of our future dives. Sadly nobody snagged any today. (But now that we are certified, we can bring cameras diving, so hopefully, more pictures soon!)
Diving really took up our day and definitely wore us all out. A marine biology class followed a delicious helping of breakfast burritos. Our chefs really killed it today. We were pleasantly greeted with the grades of our first midterm as well, and we learned lots about turtles and sponges in the lecture. Did anybody else know that sea sponges are the only animals that do not have brains, nerves, or the capability to move? And that they perform wonders by acting as filters in the ocean! My favorite part of Marine Bio is how applicable it is to our daily lives; we get to see what we’re learning.
After dive one wrapped up, we were greeted by heaping bowls of fried rice, and Dive two quickly followed. Even though most of us returned to the same site, it was still incredible. Our favorite British Marine Bio teacher Amy said it was the most lively reef she’s seen in a long time. I personally could not even tell it was the same site. A plethora of different shapes and colors of corals and sponges covered big rocks and the crevices between them. I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of swimming straight up a 20 ft wall moving in life. The highlight of the dive for me was seeing an octopus change colors to blend into its background!
Pictured: 1. Eating lunch after our first dive. 2. Our chefs of the day whipping out breakfast burritos. 3. Prepping our dive gear before heading out: weight belt, tank, fins, mask, snorkel, and our BCD (buoyancy control device). 4. A nice sunrise this morning. I didn’t get up quite in time for the color show, but it was beautiful as it peaked over the mountains. 5. Breakfast burrito spread out and ready to be devoured. Also pictured is some banana bread that a kind baker sold us this morning. 6. The process of launching the dinghies is becoming second nature to all of us.