Location: Tobago Cays
Guten morgen all,
I am writing with the most exciting news that we finally made it to Tobago Cays!!! And the water is the most perfect turquoise blue – if you are wondering what it looks like here, feel free to watch Pirates of the Caribbean. The island that they ditched Captain Jack Sparrow on and made him Governor of (twice) is just off our starboard bow. Pulling into Tobago Cays is always mesmerizing, but it felt especially nice today after so many previous attempts. We pulled in right around breakfast time and then had a few quiet, peaceful hours to take a breath and enjoy our new location. Some went to the beach, some went for a snorkel, and I enjoyed some delicious coffee on the stern (If you don’t know me, coffee is just about my favorite thing). After our relaxing start, we had a wonderful leadership class led by Eamon the Great. As you can imagine, it was great.
In the afternoon we had Oceanography, where we learned about marine sediments!!! That may not sound three-exclamation point worthy to some of you, but boy, would you be wrong. Marine sediments are so cool and come from many different places (there are hydrogenous, biogenous, lithogenous, and cosmogenous sediments) and can tell you all kinds of things about the life and conditions that used to be in the ocean above. Plus, we got the great honor of working with our own “sediment sample” and identifying the different types of sediment within our sample to figure out where the sample had come from – hint, it was Antarctica and the Mid-Ocean Ridge. While we were mostly successful, we had some errors in our data, as everyone kept eating the sediment before it could be counted… the sediment was candy. We counted candy. And ate it. But we learned about sediment along the way! We love labs.
After class, we had more snorkel time, and then everyone got ready for the beach BBQ!! Everyone took this opportunity to wear their “regular clothes,” which for many included jeans, despite Sam’s very clear announcement that it would be a wet entry to/from the beach/dinghy. Needless to say, everyone attended the BBQ with wet clothes on. Everyone except The Mountain, of course, because she actually listened and wore her swimsuit for the dinghy ride. Go the Mountain!!
The BBQ was fantastic – we had an absolute feast, complete with fresh lobster and sweet plantains. Then we got to hang out with the local Spotted Eagle Rays and Balloon fish. Yeah, it was pretty epic.
And that was our day! I’d say it was a pretty good one. : D
Picture 1: Sunset from the beach BBQ
Picture 2: Our BBQ meal
Picture 3: an eagle ray and two balloonfish
Picture 4: guess that foot
Picture 5: a spotted eagle ray