The One Where We Travel To Dolphinland

Fieuw, Sophia just taught me how to play the most intensive game of “rock, paper, scissors” EVER. It’s so much more fun than the one Maun Floris (“older brother Floris”) and I always play. It’s so stressful, my gosh. I always ended up doing “scissors”, which of course she picked up really quickly and so she always won. Not a great thing, knowing that I’m the most competitive person in the world. It’s fun, I’ll teach you some time.

Okay, story time now.

The Diving

Yet another AMAZING week of diving. Where should I even begin my story? You want to hear about the dolphins? Or the Baraccuda? Or would you rather hear about the turtle of the practice PIT dives? AAAAAH SO MUCH TO TEEEELLL, PANIC! Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read, you begin with “A B C”, when you dive you begin with “you watch me”. Yes, this is a new version of the best “Sound of music” song.

A total of 8 dives this week. Simone, Adam and I – a.k.a. The Benthic Bosses – passed our identification tests and started doing practice PIT’s. Let’s not go into to much detail,  but: a PIT is the method for data collection that we’ll start using soon. You roll out a transact tape and identify the species of coral at every 20 cm. Amazing buoyancy skills: needed! What it comes down to is that we’ve been laying out the tape and been spending a lot of time diving up-side-down. It’s hard and challenging, but that also makes it fun.

Next to PIT, we’ve had some pretty damn amazing dives. We had a couple of great drift dives, where the current pushes you along and makes you feel like you’re flying. This weekend, I got to be a Divemonster again and guided a group of fellow vols. How I love Divemonstering! The dive was spectacular: near a wall that plummets straight down, into the deep. Later that day, we had another driftdive. All of us were goofing around like idiots: doing some great karate kicks, pretending to be waterbenders and doing somersaults. You know, normal stuff. Just before the dive, Caz had told us that there was a residential frogfish around the divesite, so we had to keep our eyes open. About halfway into the dive, she gets really excited and calls us all over, for she had found the frogfish. Below a picture of here and her frogfish.

Yes, that’s a plastic frog. Hmpf, frogfish, make that the cat wise, Caz. It was April Fool’s Day, need I say more? AND, at the end of the dive, we came across a group of approximately 150 baraccuda. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY BARACCUDA. Can you imagine all of them turning on you? Yikes. Just to clarify: that didn’t happen. My imagination is going a little nuts. Fore those interested, click on the word “baraccuda” to see a little video I made.

So, after the dive we went for a little boatride, destination: Dolphinland. It’s probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. 70+ dolphins putting on a show, just for us. They jumped, came up to the boat and swam with us. I have some amazing video footage, which you can find under the following link:

Dolphinland

The video is short, but still mind-bah-lowing. I can honestly say this made my entire week. And I really needed something to make my week. First, my regulator broke. For the non-divers under us: why are we friends? Seriously? The regulator is the object that connects the air in your tank to your mouth: pretty needed when you go diving. Then, my STUPID (excuse my language) computer broke. After that, my SD card stopped working AND the auxcable from my headphones broke. How is it possible for so many things to break within 48 hours? HOW I ASK YOU?! And, what did I ever do to deserve this? Don’t answer that.

Sofia’s Birthday

Sofia is the youngest daughter in our little homestay family. It turned out it was her birthday this week, which took us a lot of time to figure out. In Tetun, they don’t have a word for “birthday” so you can imagine the language barrier and the struggle to get to the point. She also kept saying “today nine, tomorrow nine”, which makes no sense what so ever.

Eventually, we figured it out and decided to get her a gift. What does a nine year old girl like? We ended up making a bracelet, getting her a necklace and giving her A JAR FULL OF LOLLYPOPS! They didn’t taste great, and we were offered a lollypop before breakfast for the next couple of days, but they were a great success!

 

Other Activities

Next to diving and eating candy, we also did a beach clean, watched the second half of “BBC Sharks”, went out for ice cream and cleaned the boat. We helped out in English class at AHHA, and played volleyball and Frisbee after (images unavailable due to the breaking of all my stuff).

We also did a sea-grass practice swim with people from the local community. This is to teach them how to collect data, so in the future we won’t be needed. It was a big hassle, my gosh. They swim without fins, so naturally they were really tired after 10 minutes of swimming. To get the life vests on, we had to go back to the beach and almost lost the transact tape in the process. At the end of the afternoon, it was a really good exercise and we got tea and cookies!

Last 10 days

By now it’s Monday, because I was too lazy to write you guys yesterday (sorry not sorry) and another week has gone by. Tonight is the last night Simone and I will be spending with our homestay family, where we’ve come to feel so at home.We’re going to miss the cute smiles Kalistru gives us, the demanding to play games, the helping in the kitchen and the being part of a family. Luckily, we planned some nice activities with them to do on the weekend. You’ll be able to read about those in next week’s post.

And let’s not forget: we’re going to miss our puppy. Boy has gotten so used to us and we to her. She’s so sweet. Every morning we get a little puppy coudle. What’s life going to be like without that?

Knowing that we’ll be leaving Atauro in just 10 days makes me so sad. A couple of weeks ago, it seemed like we had forever and now time seems to be running out. It just seems like we still have so many things to do. WHERE HAVE ALL THE WEEKS GONE? PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

HO HO HO, I almost forgot to tell you about Hudi Sona. Hudi Sona is Tetun for “fried banana”. I’m not a banana person, trust me. The last time I knowingly ate a banana, I was still growing teeth and learning how to walk. But Hudi Sona is the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I wish I could make some and store it for the rest of my travels. IT’S SO GOOOOOD.

Write you soon.
Fi