Today Cedar cabin was able to wake up at a solid 7:40 and eat a breakfast provided by our dive instructor Casey right at the Guavaberry Resort where our marine bio group is stating. Our fresh and relaxing start however was short lived. We immediately left the resort as a group to our community service site about half a mile down the road. The community service group Voices that we are helping is already there waiting for us with buckets of primer, paint, some brooms, and piles of dirt ready for us to shovel into buckets which we would later use for planting the palm trees. Starting at our task at hand (priming and painting the fences/sweeping the dirt and dust away from the walls) was, as we soon found out, a very tedious job. I quickly switched between the different jobs starting with sweeping with Tanner, then painting and priming with Casey and the rest if the group, and then to showering and planting the recently arrived palm trees as well as watering them. It proved to be a vey messy day as well, especially with me on top of Joe and Andrews shoulders trying to paint the top of the the concrete fence. Finally at the end of the day we finished the fence, which turned out great, and said goodbye to Kyle and the rest of the team. Straight off we came back to the resort, had a wonderful lunch at Mad Dog’s, then headed to the baths which were quite beautiful. We snorkeled from the baths out of “Devil’s Bay” and started kicking our fins back to the Virgin Gorda shoreline. On the way there I saw my first lionfish that was on it’s own in the wild and also a baby hawksbill turtle on its own. However this was not the end of the exciting night and certainly not the end of my first sightings. We went on another snorkel trip at nighttime around the shoreline Where I saw my fist squid. This sqid was seen eating another fish in the wild and as one of the most amazing things I had seen. I also saw two stingrays and a 3 foot long Turpin that, at first sight, we all thought to be a nurse shark. To top off the night me and my partner Joe got to see a baby octopus clinging to a rock and scurrying away from our flashlights that we were chasing it with. At the Ensor the night we all turned off our flashlights and looked up at the beautiful sky that was filled with stars. Certainly more stars than I have ever seen, so far I absolutely love the BVI’s.
