07/06/12 Arriving at Cap Ternay

My excitement for coming to the GVI program here Seychelles has been building up for the last few months and my arrival here in Cap Ternay did not disappoint. As soon as we were picked up by the staff, we were totally immersed in the daily activities at base camp. The staff and old volunteers are amazingly friendly and ready to help us newbies with anything. The atmosphere around camp is always lively and there’s always something entertaining to look forward to, whether it’s movie night, or meat night, or party night. Everyone has such a great work dynamic as well – we all contribute to the daily chores to keep everybody happy. It’s fun to get to experiment with the cooking here, although a little tough to have to cook for 30 people for each meal. The limited ingredients actually make the dishes quite creative and interesting – there’s always something different to eat every day and it’s always really good! I think it’s really great that we all get to contribute to the running of the dives as well. The staff here make sure we know all the safety procedures and we learn how to fill tanks for everybody to use. Even though we’ve only just arrived a few days ago, it like we’ve been here for ages because we’ve gotten into the rhythm of camp and really started to feel at home here.

Apart from camp life, we’ve also been very quickly trained up to get ready for our surveying. Every day we have a full schedule of various lectures about the reef ecology and fauna along with our specific fish or coral lectures for our surveying. We get to go on a dive at least once a day and we had some refresher dives to make sure that all of us had the necessary skills needed for the surveying we’ll be doing later. There is so much to be done here diving wise, and I’m excited for what the next three weeks of diving will bring for us here!

07/06/12 Arriving at Cap Ternay