Location: Anse de Boillante
The morning brought with it some new scenery as we picked up anchor from our Les Saintes location, heading north to a cool little spot called Anse de Bouillante. When I say cool, I mean HOT HOT HOT! If you are not French, you won’t know that it means place of the boil. This bay has a little river that feeds it with HOT water from a geothermal site. There is a power plant that uses geothermal heat and produces 8% of the power here in Guadeloupe! The warmed water is so hot that the power plant actually has to add cool water to it in order to use it!! It is the only place in France of its kind, wow!!!
Before we arrived in this unique ocean hot spring, we puttered up the beautiful coast of the large island of Guadeloupe. It smelled like flowers and had gorgeous sloping hills filled with quaint French towns and lush greenery. As we motored along, the students started their rescue diving course with everyone’s favorite PADI videos. By 10 am, we were coasting into the bay, lifting the anchor off its cap rail resting place, and excited to nestle into a new anchorage spot for the evening. Once anchored, the students took their Crew exam and realized there is never a bad time to make sandwiches! After a sandwich lunch (a coincidence) and some delicious fresh French pastries (thanks Steph and Drew), we turned the rescue videos into real life and practiced throwing life rings, horseshoe buoys, and approaching a panicked diver. Once everyone was rescued, we dinghied over to the hot springs. A beautifully relaxing beach with a rocky bottom enticed us all to relax for a few hours in the warm water and enjoy some conversations with each other. On the return to the good ship, Ocean Star, everyone gave their best try at dinghy back flips (some more successful than others…Q….). As I unloaded my last run of humans, I found none other than an OCTOPUS at the bottom of the dinghy. We did our best to resuscitate our graying oceanic friend to no avail.
After a delicious dinner, our squeeze ritual continued as we discussed which pastry the person to your right would be (maybe we need to leave the French Islands and their buttery, flaky deliciousness behind). We finished up the emergency first response course theory and as we get ourselves ready for bed, reflect on how fun these past 20 days have been and how fun the next 20 days will be. As I’ve heard numerous students say over the past week… that we all know each other better than friends back home that have known us for years. We realize all of our experiences are richer when shared with the people around us. So for that, we are thankful for this safe place. We can be our weird selves and maybe get made fun of a little, but we know deep down it is because we all feel comfortable with the other 17 souls around us.