Day 14 - Fishermen’s Birthday Celebration

Yesterday, Steph, Mandy, Poppy, Talitha and I headed off at about 11am. We got the bus from Rose Hill to Sateurs and then another to Gouyave which is the next town after Victoria. Tom went with the swim club to a competition on the other side of the island. We met a little boy at the bus stop in Rose  hill called Cameron who started talking to us saying he missed his 11am bus and we told him we were going to Gouyave and he said he was going there as well to a pool and his sister was there. So he came along with us. When we got to Gouyave we asked someone if there was a pool and they said there wasn’t, we then realised the boy was meant to be going to the competition but didn’t know where it was and because he’s seen some of us at swim club he thought that’s where we were going. We had to phone Kate and put him on a bus back to Rose Hill.

There was music and street food, people drinking and dancing in the street. the music was so loud I’ll be surprised if my ear drums are still in tact! We went for the fishermen’s birthday celebrations which is like extended fish Friday and there were huge speakers every couple metres booming music 🎶. We walked up and down a few times and found somewhere to eat. I had fish and chips but I’m not sure what the fish was, we think it was tuna. Apparently the celebrations are much wilder at night and it gets so full of people you can barely move. We couldn’t stay until evening because some of us had Night Survey. Once we had had a look around we got the bus back to Rose Hill. On our walk back to the house we met a guy with the tiniest puppies ever, they were so cutee. He said they were 2 months but they looked smaller than that.

Mandy cooked Split pea and carrot with rice for dinner before Steph, Poppy and I headed out on Night Survey with Sharka and Steve. I went on the first run with Steph and Sharka and Poppy went on the 2nd with Steve. I saw 3 hatchlings but no adults last night, there were some tracks though. poppy and Steve saw one lay a nest. In the morning we found two hatchlings we’ve brought back to release tonight. Steph showed poppy and I the different stages of hatchling movement. When they’re down on the floor they move their front flippers one after the other to move along whereas if you lift them up they wave both in synch as if swimming because they can’t feel the ground beneath them and it’s instinct for them to swim if they’re not on the ground. As Steph put it ‘little balls of instinct’.