Location: Cane Garden Bay, Tortola
Today, we woke up bright and early and prepared ourselves for our big day coming up. We were on the dock at 7 am and listened to Mike talk about the big hike and it made us all more nervous than we already were. The beginning of the hike felt like it never ended. It was incredibly steep, and a lot of us were struggling. Eventually our boat made it to the top with the reward of tropical smoothies waiting for us. Noah was the first one up the steep mountain and I was accompanied by Sariah and Nadiya as we all pushed each other to get to the top. Maren and I had a great talk on the way down, and periodically, we would run down and try not to fall flat on our faces. There were a few bumps with the hike, like Houston taking a wrong turn and Noah falling in the woods, but we all made it out alive. As we headed to shore, there were many restaurants to choose from, including the place where Jimmy Buffet wrote “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” and we all filled our empty stomachs with LOTS of junk food and told ourselves that we deserved it. Claire and Celeste went shopping in one of the stores and got some cool things from the locals.
We headed back to the boat around one and tried not to fall in and out of the dinghy, holding all of our bags and snacks. After all of that, you would assume that we would have a chill rest of the day, but it was quite the opposite. We headed straight to this one island to have a sandcastle competition against the other boats of AQ. Ella, Julia, and Maren were working so hard on our turtle sand sculpture so we could beat all the other boats. Houston, B, Noah, Aidan, and a few other guys from the other boats decided that they wanted to make their own sandcastle group. They ended up just digging a massive hole in the sand but they were all very proud of it. Although we were exhausted, the whole boat was psyched for our 3 BBQs. We sailed to Sydney’s, which had so many cool shirts and delicious food. Everyone bought at least one thing from here, as the designs were so unique and unlike anything I’ve seen. With all our other BBQs, we had a DJ, but Sydney’s had hair braiding with beads. Of course, Houston and Noah jumped at the opportunity to get one. There was also a wall painted with yellow that we could write on. A few of us wrote our names and I drew our famous mascot, Patrick. It rained a few times because of the hurricane, but none of us seemed to mind it as it put on a cool show of lighting and thunder throughout the sky. Overall, it was a great day for all of us, and hopefully, B doesn’t get blown out of the boat in his hammock tonight. Fingers crossed.