Location: Dominica
Dear readers,
It’s Olympus again! This morning, we started our day strong with some ice-cold, delicious smoothie bowls courtesy of our head chef, Cessily. Fun fact: We don’t have a blender on board, so smoothie bowls are made by repeatedly chopping frozen fruit in a pot with a knife until it reaches a blended consistency. I do believe that all chefs who make smoothie bowls for us are a bit closer to carpal tunnel diagnoses, and we are forever grateful! It is a labour of love and we LOVE them for it. After our speedy and early breakfast, we hopped in Plaai for a short ride to a diving boat(YAY!) along with our diving kits that we had set up the night before(sans cylinders because they were provided) like children preparing their outfit for the first day of school. As we pulled up to the dive boat, we admired its two open-air decks and the rows of tanks on either edge. We thankfully got to avoid the seasickness that many people experience on dive boats(even me!) due to our acclimation to Argo, which set us in high spirits for the first dive of the day. Once we resurfaced from our gorgeous dive filled with seagrass fish, corals, an octopus, and one magnificent seahorse(<3), we all sunbathed up on the top deck like a platform of seals while the nitrogen levels in our bodies lowered to acceptable levels again. Once we were nearing the end of our rest, the dive boat drove to the next dive site in Champagne Bay. On our second dive, we saw some of the biggest parrot fish I’ve ever seen and found out where the bay got its name as we swam through tiny champagne-sized bubbles emerging in columns from the sea floor below us. After sunning like seals again and helping the dive boat crew unload their tanks, we ate a delicious watermelon feta salad made by the staff left behind but curated by Cessily(thanks staff). We had a relaxing afternoon to swim and work on essays, finished off with a yummy taco bowl dinner. All in all, it was a great day and a nice, slow afternoon to get all of our ducks in order for the nearing end of classes. The evening ended with a vibrant sunset to match the mood.