22 – crazy stories of Beau Vallon

December 13, 2011

I have only been living in Beau Vallon for 5 days, and already so much has happened. We got robbed a couple of days ago while we were in the house. They took my beloved iPod as well as Emily’s Gerber toolkit with knives and other tools, as well as a flashlight. We found a big long stick right next to our windows later that evening, and we think they opened the windows and probably “fished” our stuff out of our rooms. We were really upset and a little afraid since it all happened while all of us were in the living room, but at the end of the day, it’s only things and it could have been much worse. So there we were at 11pm, filling up our first police statements ever in a foreign country. Every day is a learning experience. The next morning, the policemen came back and looked at our windows for fingerprints, but they haven’t found any matches so far. I was honestly quite surprised by the efficiency of the police; we’re in Africa, I thought that would take days. We all felt a little unsafe in our own house after that, we still do, but I guess we have to live with it. We are just now very careful about putting stuff out of sight and having the windows closed at all times. 

The days at Blue Sea have been quite chill so far. We have had most of our afternoons off since we don’t have a lot of clients and the sea has been rough. We are almost done with our Rescue Diver course. We all passed the test today and we only have a couple of other in-water skills to go through. We have worked on rescuing tired and panicked diver at the surface, bringing unconscious diver at the surface and to the boat, buddy breathing, not feeling well underwater. The boss comes back in the country tomorrow though, so I’m sure we will be done having our afternoons off. Damn!

We have had a few dives already as well, which we all love. All the other Divemaster interns at the other dive shop have not even set foot on their own boats yet, so we are all pumped to get some dives in and discover new sites in the Beau Vallon bay. We went yesterday to this site called Horseshoe Rock and the visibility was insane! It was probably a 20m visibility, but there was a lot of current and it ended up being mostly a drift dive. We were swimming along the reef and another dive boat almost anchored on us! The anchor literally fell 5 meters away from us, and then dragged on the reef for a good 10m ! We all wished we could have grabbed on the anchor and stopped it from destroying the corals.

Life at the house has been great otherwise, apart from the break-in. We all live together pretty well, and we have had a couple random dance parties in the evening. On Friday we are organizing a big barbecue with the other DiveMaster interns. We have all been pretty good at keeping in touch so far, hanging out at each other’s house once in a while. It’s also a very small town, so we often end up running into each other at the Internet café or in the streets. I do miss having a lot of people around and being able to hang out in the hammocks and have people stop by and chat for some time.

Most of the 5/10weekers are now gone, and I have to admit I am having some troubles adjusting to this new lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong, I love the hot showers, the laundry machine and the proximity of the shops, but I miss life at camp and wish I could go back there every single second. I remember that’s exactly how I felt after I left Belize, and I find it quite ironic that the less comfort I have, the better I feel and the more I miss a place. I have been feeling quite homesick over the last couple of days, but that’s probably because everyone’s gone home now and I feel a little left behind. I know I’ll be fine and I know I’d rather be here in the Seychelles than sitting at home. Once all the emotions from these last couple of days are gone, I know it’s going to be amazing. Sorry for this long post without much images, but now here are some photos from the last week or so, as well as one of the videos my friend Alasdair made! xxx

“Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened”