Ashton Abroad: Day 95

A lot has been going on these past two weeks! We spent a lot of time preparing our research presentations, which we presented to the public on the 13th. It was a lot of work and I'm very happy to be done with it, but the actual presentations were fun! Dressing up and talking to large groups of people doesn't scare me.

Last Saturday was a clean-up dive at Yellow Sub, the dive shop we go to. There were over 110 people there for the clean-up, and I ended up diving with a man I met on the Bonaire online forum named Trevor--so now I have two dive buddies with the same name, but one is 20 and one is 78. We picked up lots of bottles and trash, so it was a success. Unfortunately some people didn't understand that once coral is growing on a piece of trash, it has become part of the reef--I saw a guy taking up a tire with coral on it, and he probably killed a bunch of baby fish in the process. After the clean-up dive there was a free barbeque, and I sat with Old Trevor and some folks from Sweden and had a great time.

Last night we went camping on Klein Bonaire, the little island next to Bonaire. After 5pm (when the last water taxi leaves the island) we had the whole island to ourselves! We were supposed to have a professor and intern come with us, but because neither of them actually wanted to come, I requested to take full responsibility for all the gear and people--so we got to go alone! (Not that it would have been bad with them there, but it's more fun to just have your own group.) Thank goodness nothing bad happened!

That's the main island back there behind Leah.
(Props to Chris Sundby for the pictures, since I forgot my camera.)

Beach bonfires aren't allowed because the island is an important turtle nesting area, but there are charcoal grills that we used to make our hotdog dinner. We almost forgot the matches but fortunately I found them in the dry bag--phew. We set up our tent next to the water and had the entire beach to ourselves all night! We chased a lot of crabs and even saw a feral cat! We fell asleep in sand under our bottomless tent and slept to the sound of waves. It was fantastic.

Our tent next to the beach!

The view this morning.

I woke up first and started the fire for breakfast, but then realized I forgot basically all the cookware--which was completely my fault. I attempted to use a flat-ish rock to cook eggs on but that was a total failure because the eggs slid right off. I ended up using an upside-down glass lid (that's right, I brought a lid but no pan) to scramble eggs, and I cooked the bacon right on the grill. And you know what? IT WAS DELICIOUS. Take that, MacGyver.