Location: Muskmelon Bay, Guana Island
The day began with a pretty slow start. We woke up the latest we ever had—7 AM. The day started off with the staff going to a meeting, and all of us kids sat around watching Emmy and Tessa make us pancakes. Since Joe, Anna, and Tommy were at the meeting, we had no music. So, we took it upon ourselves to search through the radio. As Noah shuffled through the stations, we were subjected to gospel music, Caribbean gospel music, and talk radio. Just as we were about to give up, we finally found some music we recognized. The whole kitchen went up in cheers, and we got exactly three songs before the ads came. We ate breakfast, cleaned up, and our staff finally came back (They told us they would be gone an hour. They lied. They were gone 15 minutes longer). We then got underway to the Kodiak Queen. On the sail there, Tessa, Regan, Rachel, Paul, Derek, Logan, and I all worked on our fish ID journals. After a good chunk of time focused solely on the journal, I decided to take a nap. Tessa joined me, so I missed some of the other things going on, but it was worth it. Finally, we reached the first dive site. This dive was a wreck dive with a Kraken structure on top of it. However, due to past hurricanes, the Kraken part of it was mostly destroyed. There were still some tentacles on top of the ship when we went down though. The site was full of different fish species, and Tessa and I spotted an octopus. Anyway…. when we splashed for the first dive, we were surrounded by jellyfish. So, so many jellyfish. Descending was a definite challenge, but the safety stop was quite the site for jellies. We ate a delicious lunch of ramen made for us by Emmy and Garrett and then set sail for Muskmelon. The sail was very long but relaxing. I sat on the hard top with Derek, Logan, and Rachel and chilled for a bit. Then Paul came up and started creating a design for a goby T-shirt. He has an all-consuming obsession with gobies now. Rachel and Derek were giving input, and Paul was somewhat receptive. Regan took a nap, and Mirah read her new book.
We got to Muskmelon and snorkeled the reef there to prepare for our night dive. After that, we set up the gear and had a deliciously bland dinner of bean chilly (no offense Joe). We went on our night dive soon after dinner and had a mini rave to hype ourselves up before we splashed. Our goal for this dive was to navigate ourselves around the reef and surface at the correct boat. Mirah and I navigated in a square and made our way to the boat pretty smoothly. The others, however, had more interesting stories. Paul and Derek saw an 8-foot-long nurse shark. It apparently swam right underneath them. They were both really excited about it and were acting like two kids hopped up on sugar when they got back to the boat. Maya, Noah, Garrrett, and Logan all saw a ray and hermit crab, and Garrett saw a small squid. They all met up with Paul and Derek and surfaced together at the wrong boat. We all took ocean showers and ate some brownies. I then went to change but was interrupted when everyone kept yelling my name from upstairs. When I went up to see what the commotion was, I was greeted by a bunch of people on a dingy holding a container of Margarin. Joe was standing next to me holding an empty container of Margarin, and everyone was yelling at me to scoop out the margarin and put it into the empty container. I was then given a piece of bread to wipe my hands with and was told by Paul and Emmy that I had to eat it. I promptly took a single bite, gagged, and threw the rest to the fish to enjoy. That leads us to the present, where I’m writing this blog and sitting around a table with Tessa, Regan, Rachel, Paul, and Derek, talking and joking around. Aight Ya’ll, that’s all I got for today. Everyone sends their love to our readers tonight.
XO all the way to Texas,
Anya B.