The day began fairly simple. I woke up at 7am (I know… shocking!) ate breakfast, and got ready to join Fred on some errands. We first made our way to the storage containers which hold a large number of SECAR’s artifacts. This was supposed to be a short trip where Fred showed me the containers’ location and discussed how I will be putting artifacts into a google doc. Should’ve been simple enough, right? Wrong. After looking in the first container, which was pristine, we opened the second container…
Last night was a fairly typical rainstorm, seeing as it is currently the “wet season” here in the Caribbean. But, the second container Fred and I walked into made it seem like a hurricane swept through the island last night. The back of the container had a massive puddle (luckily, Fred had already removed the boxes of artifacts from the back), while the middle held rain-soaked boxes. We shot into action, removing the boxes hit by water, and once those were cleared, I squeegeed out as much water as possible. Who knew that getting yelled at to squeegee the deck as a lifeguard would come in handy? We moved the wet boxes into the SECAR van and continued to run the rest of our errands which involved buying groceries and attempting, and failing, to find a man selling fireworks from a shipping container.
I’m not sure what was originally planned for me to work on today, but whatever it was, was forgotten. Instead, I spent the entire day emptying boxes and bags and placing artifacts on drying racks. The process was long and tedious and messy, but I loved it! So, I guess my love of doing one of the more boing tasks of the field is a good sign that I’m on the right track.
At the end of the day, Fred and I picked up two of our friends and the people running the underwater field school I worked on last year, Alex and Ruud. While at the tiny airport we ran into Marieke and Mike, two of the owners of Scubaqua, the best dive shop I’ve ever been to. They hugged me and then admonished me for not coming down to the dive shop already, despite only having been here for a day 😊 Then dinner with Fred and Alex, and now in my inability to sleep, I am getting my blog started!
I’m not sure what tomorrow holds, but I can’t wait!
Allie's Travels 