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Location: St. Vincent

Today featured one of the best hikes I’ve ever been on in my life. Our exciting excursion called for an early morning wake-up at 5:30, which I executed by playing “Oompa Loompa” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was received well, and everybody was up for a quick breakfast of pumpkin bread before we dinghied over to the awaiting taxis onshore. We arrived at the site at 8:30 in the morning. The volcano we hiked was called “Mount Soufriere” (‘sulfur’ in English) and is currently considered active, showing signs of magma activity as recently as the 1970s. This was the first volcano a lot of us have ever hiked and the first active volcano any of us have hiked in the past. The route up was 3.75 km, with approximately 600 m of elevation, which took us just under 90 minutes. It was steep, very foggy, and humid as could be at first. However, as we got towards the summit, the humidity dissipated, and a cold breeze carried us to the top. The view from the top of the crater was absolutely amazing regardless of the fog, and we met some fellow adventurers as well. From the top of the crater, we saw an unbelievable amount of green and a small pond inside. While some of us chose to stop and eat lunch, others were quick to start trekking around the crater’s rim. It poured for a bit while we were on top of Mount Soufriere, and it was nice to feel cold again for the first time in weeks. Our descent was much quicker, although a few of us almost got lost in the fog, and we were able to stop again near the bottom for the second round of lunch sandwiches and goldfish. Brit pulled out his lifestraw during the meal, and he and Ridge tested it out by drinking from these murky pools of water we were sitting by. (Apparently) it was very tasty and refreshing.

Later in the day, we returned to our mothership and proceeded to shower and do a bit of a passage preparation to get ready for tomorrow’s trip to St. Lucia. Matthew cooked up a mean stir fry as head chef, so everybody has some good food in their stomachs for the evening. Our first marine biology essay is due tomorrow, and everybody is busy typing away in the salon, so I better be off to work on it myself…

Pictured: Kennedy enjoying the view of the crater; Ocean Star crew finding their way down through the fog; Steffen pointing at his fellow shipmates further down the hill; Ridge using a life-straw to drink from a stagnant pool of water; Amy and Miranda on top of the crater, with Nate visible behind them.