What a great day! It started early this morning. 6:30 to be exact. I woke to chickens crooing. I thought wow this place really is rural. Then I saw Mr. Kirby with his iPad playing a recording of a rooster. That previous thought turned into wow how did he get that? After a delicious bacon-filled breakfast, Laura taught us all about how to identify species of fish. Then we went out to a bay and practiced with some snorkeling and hands on demonstration. After getting tan but mostly burned, we had some lunch and then headed straight to the marina for our second dive of the trip. Because we took about half of the beach with us either in our boots, shoes, swim trunks, or on ourselves we had to shower with a hose before allowed on the boats. We headed out to the Dog Islands. These islands were named after the barking that sailors heard from the islands but were always to scared to investigate because they thought the barks to be from ravenous wild dogs. The barking turned out to be from seals so they decided to kill the seals and eat them. All the barking is gone now but the names stuck. We dived into the reefs and around huge boulders. At one point we got to dive through a super narrow chimney like structure. With two walls on either side of you rising for about 30 feet and only having maybe 3 feet of room, one could get quite claustrophobic but we worked through it. After we identified a bunch of species we got our pictures taken underwater then went up to get back in time for mass. Mass was amazing to say the least. On top of a hill, sits the Catholic church. It looks out over the whole island of Virgin Gorda and the bay as well as the dock. We sang to no music and although none of us have the voice of a singer, we sounded great. After getting our picture taken with the priest we changed out of our nice clothes into something a little more familiar. Wearing swim trunks a t-shirt and flip flops we headed down to the Guavaberry beach where the always amazing Jeff and Casey hAd prepared a big cookout on the beach for us. The cheeseburgers were amazing but the real treat were the Brawtwurts. it always feels good to connect to the homeland. As soon as the sun went to sleep we went night snorkeling. We saw an octopus, a few sting rays, but perhaps the creepiest where the tarpons. They are like bright silver bullets gliding trough. They come out of no where. Anyway as soon as we hopped out of the water we got out of the wet suits took showers and went to bed. What a great day. Can’t wait for the next.
Soca sitting in our cabin with Jeff and Christian.
