After sleeping for a solid 30 minutes before waking up for my flight at 5:45 I was really not well-rested and was really hungry. Julian gave me his Pringles. We had a flight from Dallas to Miami, a 2 hour layover and another flight with another 3 hour layover and then a third flight from San Juan to Beef Island. My 2 room mates are Julian and Andrew and after settling into our cottage for about an hour, we found a dog sized whip scorpion in the corner of our room. Surprisingly we didn’t handle this situation with rationality or composure, and decided to stand on chairs and attack the non-lethal and neutrally-tempered arachnid with a broom. Julian smacked it around with the end of the broom and its legs shot off in every direction. For the rest of the night we continually checked our beds for bear-sized predators and couldn’t go to bed for several hours.
This morning we woke up at 7am and went to the Old Yarde Village to get a review on everything we had learned this year and last year as well as to meet the new staff members we were going to be working with. We had 2 meals there between lessons and chill time at the pool and finally got to see the ocean. After another review on gear assembly and boat safety, we learned that we were going to go diving out near the marina. We put our gear together and I put my goPro camera on my chest. I jumped in, turned my camera on, and proceeded with the skills-based dive for 35 minutes or so then returned to the surface with an incredibly painful headache. We got back to guavaberry, dried off and explored the area around our cabin while taking pictures and hanging out. After the hour resting period we walked to mad dogs and had delicious chicken pizza for dinner. I got to talk to friends/family since we had wifi and had an amazing ice cream Sunday that I mooched off my friend. Casey and Jeff then surprised us with really nice underwater cameras. We walked home and got some tea and stuff and were terrified of spiders 5eva.
The wolf-spider
Our balcony view tho
Our dive
