October 31, 2011
Another busy and emotionally intense weekend just went by, and we are now entering our 5 week here at Cap Ternay; already halway there. Our 5-week interns are leaving at the end of this week, so our week has been modified from its normal schedule. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we have normal dives. On Wednesday is our big barbecue and last party all together. Thursday is a big camp clean before the arrival of 8 new 5-weekers on Friday morning, and the non 5-weekers have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. I am going to La Digue and Praslin with some other people, and it should be a good get-away and relaxing weekend.
Anyways, we’re not there yet. Friday was THE BEST DAY EVER for me, as I swam with a manta ray for the first time. It was so majestic, beautiful, graceful… I don’t think any words can express how I truly felt when I free-dove to 10meters with it and just floated there as it was going in circles, belly up, feeding on plankton.
At first I got out of our dive with my buddy and the boat dropped us where the manta was, but nothing. Everyone was like “oh yeah I played with it for 10 minutes” and I just wanted to cry. Our boat started to head back to shore, as we start unloading the boat, we see people from other boats jumping back in. At that point, I had completely given up and was ready to cry myself to sleep. But we went back out, and it was there. We swam with it for an hour at least, just following it. At one point it came so close to us, swimming belly-up. I could have touched it if I had extended my arm.
What an ecstatic day! That night was also our usual Friday braii, with the theme being “bad taste and fashion faux-pas.” Not everyone dressed up, but for us who did we had a great time laughing at each other. We were finally able to have an actual barbecue outside for the first time in 4 weeks! Weehee!
We all had to stay on base this weekend because we had the “Creole Day” at the orphanage on Saturday morning. We all went from 10am-2pm, and played with the kids the whole time. We had spent the whole week creating little activity stations: arts and crafts, bowling, snorkel, face paint, rugby, Frisbee, and more… It was really fun. Some of the water activities quickly turned into a big water fights, and I did not escape (see photo!) It was really fun though, and cold water actually felt nice.
We all went out like usual to Lafaya, where I actually met some French Marines, who patrol along the east coast of Africa against the Somalian pirates, and played pool with them. It was quite a good deal, and I did not pay for anything the whole night. There was the Mr.Seychelles bodybuilding contest at Tequila Boom. It was both hilarious and disgusting at the same time. Most of my photos are blurry because I was laughing so much. Here is Tom and Alasdair trying to outcompete some of the locals:
On Sunday I was signed up to go on a whale shark snorkel trip, but it got canceled because of the pouring rain and thunder. Oh well, we’ll see other whale sharks in our bay anyways ;) It actually rained quite a lot, and I was soaking wet the whole day. Some roads had to close down because of floods, and most buses did not run in the afternoon. We were advised to “hurry up” to go back to base before everything closed down. We all made it back safely and we are in for another (half) week of coral survey!
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