Location: Fam, Raja Ampat
Helloooo!
We are currently anchored by Fam in Raja Ampat, and today was another big day for Argo!
This morning, I woke everyone up with the track Another Day of Sun from La La Land, the movie, which felt like a fitting theme song for today.
For breakfast, Susie, Julian, and Faith cheffed up pancakes that were deliciously fluffy. In typical Argo fashion, we slathered on Nutella, paired with a whipped butter situation, peanut butter, syrup, chocolate chips, and other toppings. We also finished off the fresh mango and dragonfruits we had remaining (BEST mangos Ive ever had in my life, by the way; they taste like candy).
After breakfast, we immediately got rolling on our jam-packed day. Currently, the crew is split into two groups: those getting their rescue diver cert, and those who have either already completed it or have opted out. I am part of the already completed group, and lucky for us, that means we got a morning of faff time.
Here on Argo, to faff typically means to kill time while youre supposed to be doing something else, like a chore (a main synonym is lollygagging). However, we love the word so much that we use it whenever we have free time. Id say faff is currently in the top slot of the Argo dictionary.
Anyways, our group got to faff our way over to a beautiful nearby beach cove while the rest of the crew went on their fun dive. We spent the entire morning on land, lying out in the sun, reading, listening to music, playing football, and snorkeling. It was truly a pinch me moment as I got to really take in the view with no other responsibilities. Every time we travel somewhere new, I feel the urge to say, this is the most beautiful place Ive ever been because it only gets better. I am so grateful for this opportunity every day.
I chose to spend the morning lying out with Skye and Clam, but Rhi, Isaac, Sadie, and Harry went for a longer snorkel around the cove. They found beautiful shells, saw lots of fish, and even saw a baby black-tip reef shark.
Which reminds meThough I am incredibly jealous, it would be wrong of me not to mention that the fun dive groups had incredible dives. They saw a melanistic manta ray, which is not only super rare, but also something the whole crew has been dreaming of seeing since day one. They apparently got to swim with it for around ten minutes! I also heard reports of beautiful coral, other smaller rays, and lots and lots of fish.
After our lovely morning, the crew met back up for a lunch of vodka pasta (no vodka, of course), courtesy of our chefs.
While we were all enjoying lunch, signs of our next activity started creeping in. Today was the day of the leadership challenge, and team captains, who were previously selected by the staff, started going around and drawing colored zinc on different members of the crew to slowly reveal our teams. I was given my zinc early on, and ended up being on the green team! Our team captains were Charlotte and Josie, and our team was me, Rhi, Addy, Susie, Shay, Charlie, and (King) Julian.
After lunch, we all got decked out in our team colors and did lots of smack-talking while we waited for our dinghy rides to the beach. We had very little information about what was to come, but we knew we were in for an afternoon of games, competition, and leadership challenges (this is for leadership class after all)!
The first few challenges were group competitions. We first had to race to line up in birthday order without talking. Next, we had to do a relay race where each member of the team had to tie a bowline. After that, we had my favorite competition of the day: the PFD race.
For this challenge, each team had to get from one side to another without touching the sand. We were given 3 PFDs to get 9 people across.
While other teams decided to do the typical strategy of building a bridge, we chose a creative route. We strapped two PFDs to Charlies feet, with plans to have him piggyback all of us from one side to another. In the beginning, it seemed like we were way behind, made a stupid plan, and Charlie had to restart three times. However, once we finally got the PFDs successfully on his feet, Charlie was able to fly through the course with each of us on his back (except for King Julian, who scooted his way acrosssee pictures attached). We ended up finishing first! Go green for sticking to our creativity.
After that challenge, we moved into a scavenger hunt (shoutout Shay and Charlie who were MVP), sand-castle building, and a staff lore based trivia game (shoutout Susie, Charlotte, and me who knew 17/19 of the questions).
Once we had finished our games, we shuttled back to Argo for a street taco-inspired dinner. Everyone was EXHAUSTED and went straight to bed after we ate. Today was such a fun day, and Im so grateful for every moment on Argo. The crew is having so much fun!
Love all of you at home and miss you dearly. Sending love and hugs!
XOXO,
Sophie
P.S. Come back tomorrow to see which team won the challenge!