Location: Muskmelon Bay, Guana Island
Day 13 (my personal 2-digit lucky number): arguably the best and coolest day of this camp so far. Disclaimer: this is going to be a long one! Are you ready?
We were woken by Joey’s music as per usual. Surprisingly, it wasn’t reggae this time. Joey told us he’s trying to change it up (I think everybody appreciated that). After the usual cereal breakfast, Mengmei, Pierce, and Brian spotted a turtle. Today was a rotation day, and since we’re the dive boat, we are diving first thing in the morning. Everybody quickly cleaned up and went to set up dive gear. That was when we heard a calm voice from the stern, “dolphins” 😀. It was Toby (he’s not from Hope, btw), who said it WAY too calmly for a person who just spotted two dolphins gliding around the bay! At that point, we knew today was going to be a GREAT day.
Today’s dive was our last training dive for our advanced certification. Our objective for this dive was to go down a sand highway to 21 metres/ 70 ft and master our deep dive skills. We were also learning about how the colours fade at certain depths and how eggs stay perfectly in their yolks when cracked under pressure.
Jumping in with the giant stride, everybody was excited for the dive. At the start of the dive, I saw Grace pointing at a normal-looking rock- turns out there was a perfectly camouflaged octopus under there (I definitely saw that). We moved on, frog kicking, no hands dangling, and being streamlined, with our extremely perfect buoyancy 🤭. Shout out to Oey and Mengmei for being so cool under water with their stunning advanced diver skills.
Suddenly, there was a faint noise from behind : ”squeak squeak”….. Jk, it was the two dolphins! They were so close, we could almost touch them. They were literally 1cm off my tank. Everybody, and I mean everybody, was freaking out, screaming, and kicking our feet. This was the COOLEST/EPIC/AMAZING/SPECTACULAR dive ever!!! 🤯 This definitely went into our core memories. If you think that was it, no, it’s not. Sophia and Emme spotted a Lionfish. It was their first time seeing one. Oey and I saw a deflated pufferfish lingering under a crevice. Cool man. Breccan was searching for shark teeth but didn’t find any. I hope he gets lucky next time. All 12 of us are now proud to say we are fully advanced divers with the most memorable certifying dive.
Our next rotation, the hike. It was way better than the last one, honestly, because we actually did have a view to look at along the way and at the end. It was a vast view of the ocean and of course, we took tons of pictures. Some of them by Brian, Most of them by our GoPro owner, Izzy (kudos to them). Just wait and see, it was a very beautiful view.
Lunch? NO, another rotation: Ship system. This is where we learnt about how the boat works. Thanks, Joey, for teaching us. Now we know what AC stands for (it’s not what you think it is). I still want that ice cream, BTW. “Pierce is the. Best person ever and deserves ice cream!” – Pierce
Then, it was finally lunch, and it was soup. Erm… Tuscany white bean soup, to be exact. No comment.
After that was water skiing, Sophie and Malika definitely had some fun kneeboarding while Blake and Brian enjoyed a quick game of speed (or spit, I don’t really know). Blake is getting the hang of it. And then, guess what? WE’RE BACK WITH JOEYYY. Woo hoo. Knot-tying class. We revised how to tie all the following knots: bowline, figure eights, clove hitch, and cleat hitch. I personally still struggle with some of them, and I need to learn a total of 7 knots for the sailing thing. Insane!!
Following that, we went underway to our new location for the barbecue and tied our boat together with a Pirate song. How fun. (We are still not over the smiley face pen incident 😤). We all got dressed up and ready for the barbequeeeeee. Sophie and Malika both agreed that the pineapple + Sprite juice was amazing. They had 7 cups of them!! While Breccan helped tackle counselors into the water, Blake, on the other hand, got thrown in the water a bunch of times. Sounds like fun. Some of the girls: Izzy, Mengmei, Sophia, Oey, and I were out making some new friends from Vela Vita, a boat from the dive side (if you didn’t know, Hope is on the sail side). If you were wondering what Pierce and Brian were doing, they were racing on the beach and Pierce won against Brian twice. Brian needs to lock in!! He did, though, after beating the undefeated queen of speed (THE card game that we are currently obsessed with). Go Brian! This should definitely go in the history books. It was a breakthrough.
We ended the day ocean showering in the dark with Tarpons and possibly jellyfish. What a day!
Extra notices: we will get our phones on day 15, NOT day 14. See ya in 2 days! Can’t wait! ✌️💗
Yakkin a harn tai mai wai leaw. Kid teung na krub. rak2. Jub Jub. Eiei
Also, this is my only time being the skipper. WE MISS YOU ALL!
From Oon 🙂