Location: Komodo National Park, Indonesia
Hi, Steph’s mom!
Today began with picking up our anchor from the night before with the help of our 4:30-6:00 anchor watch duo and heading toward our morning dive site. Once everyone was up and about, we started the morning with a spectacular breakfast of overnight oats and fruit, thanks to Kasey, Margaret, and Sienna. They had been hard at work the night before, and everything turned out great. After breakfast, the advanced divers headed out to work on some skills, and the first group of new divers went to go finish their open water certification. Once the first group got back, the second group headed out, and we now have ten new certified divers! Some of the most noteworthy sites were sea cucumbers, a gigantic pufferfish, a sting ray, and a variety of fish that we are learning about identifying in marine biology. While everyone was finishing up their dives, some of us went to a nearby pink sand beach to finish out our morning. We listened to music, chatted, and wandered around the beach before swimming on our ride back to Vela.
We had barbecue chicken sandwiches with french fries for lunch, and as we began cleanup, we spotted a manta ray swimming by the boat! After lunch, many of us went back to the beach to jump off the dock, play soccer, listen to some more music, and hang out. A few stayed back at the boat to have a brownie-making dance party and read some books. Wes continued working on his divemaster certification with some in-the-water skills. As the whole crew got back to the boat, we picked up anchor again and headed to our bat-watching spot. Our afternoon was relaxed, enjoying the trip around the islands to our new spot, seeing some dolphins, and hanging out around the boat.
We had Taco Sunday for dinner with onions chopped with love by Kasey, along with the treat of brownies with a bat carved into them. Our nightly squeeze question was now that you are an adult and own more things, what would you bring to show and tell. We finished the squeeze, cleaned up dinner, and got ready to see the bats fly out from the island. We watched the bats and then broke off into a variety of evening activities: working on homework, playing games, and heading to bed early for the people with anchor watch tonight.
Hi, and goodnight to everyone else’s moms as well!