Little snippet about the expo

We went diving at Rays Point after the last blog entry and we did see a huge Reef Ray! Water temp was 27deg - nice change from the murky green 14deg of the UK.

The base is at the site of an ex youth training camp, all the buildings are derelict except ours! This is kind of spooky at night. We have one building with accommodation and training rooms in, one with the kitchen and big dining area and one for all the dive kit and hanging up laundry.

When we arrived we were some of the first so there were quite a few beds to choose from. We got to choose from 3 dorms (all are quite big and light and have fans etc) so we chose the last one aka Dorm 3. Its the biggest and seems to have the best fans and most plug sockets (useful when 20 people want to charge their ipods lol) i brought a power bar with 4 plugs and it has proved so useful! all the people in our dorm are really great. It has been very democratic and no problems so far. Main argument is about who is going to switch the lights off - meaning who will be getting out of the safe haven of the mozzie net! and manage to get back in with the lights out.

There is no light pollution where the base is (read - middle of nowhere in the jungle) so the stars at night are beautiful. It feels very safe and we do have a couple of very chilled out security guards who man the gates into the base.

There are a real mixed bag on the expedition, from Colin a farmer from fife, Allie the Glaswegian lap dancer, and many more! There are a few big drinkers here but they are in Dorm 2, thankfully! One down side is there is no personal space what so ever. but that's all part of the expedition thing i guess. We have decided that every weekend we are going off base to get away from everyone and spend some time together. Oh and actually have a hot shower as there is no hot water on base (but when its 30deg a cold shower is quite refreshing).

The food is ok but mostly carb based. we have porridge for brekkie every morning, then either rice, pasta, lentils, noodles or various combinations thereof. we also have to make bread every day and i have found my favorite thing to do on base. i love making bread and i make really good bread too. oh i also made a chocolate cake the other day which came out really well. mmm chocolate. oh there are no sweets on base. missing that! We do eat fish a couple of times a week, often cooked on a huge barbecue outside the kitchen. We don't have any meat to eat there so been having steak for dinner when off base. Yummy!

The diving has been good and the house reef at the base is lovely. Geoff is getting on well with learning fish as got over 100 done already. I have got over half the corals done but learning the latin names for family & genus is hard. Will get there eventually.

We have a busy day too up at 5.45. We are divided into duty groups to do kitchen, boat, tanks and cleaning. So all the stuff round the camp is covered. No time to get bored. We can head down to the beach if we have a spare minute, people often disappear down there to escape the noise of living with 30+ other people!

I have had some crazy huge mozzie bites, some came up as big as your hand! (the bites that is not the mozzies - now that would be scary) getting better now - i think my immue system is getting used to it and not reacting as badly. oh and there are these bugs that if you squash them they had acid in and you get a horrible acid burn on your skin. nice. there are some mahoosive spiders here too - luckily not poisonous! just scary to look at!

Have been chilling out in Beau Vallon this weekend, see the pics attached. Did a fun dive yesterday - sadly we are both fish and coral geeks now!

Kei

WILL POST MORE PICS OF THE BASE ETC NEXT WEEK - I FORGOT MY CAMERA CABLE!

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