Plettenberg Bay

Okay, back from the boat trip. On Sunday evening I moved into my new, temporary home in Plett, SA. There are currently no other volunteers living in the house. I was first a bit upset about this, but there are definitely some benefits. I'm not living alone. A young couple runs the house. They are both SA natives and are very friendly and easy to hang out with. Their names are Chrissy and Daniel. I was able to choose my bedroom - my OWN bedroom, and my OWN bathroom. My room is awesome... with an ocean view :)

Every day a woman named Tuleeswa comes to the house for cleaning, laundry, and dinner preparation. She already did my laundry :) (btw - the exclamation point doesn't work on this keyboard so I'm using smiley faces instead)

Every day around 8 or 9, a lady named Tracey comes to pick me up and take me to "work". I am based at a whale-watching company, and Tracey is my supervisor there. She is from Canada so it's kinda nice to hear another North American accent in town. Yesterday was my first day. I started out the day by going out on the boat to do a wildlife survey, recording all the marine life we see, where we saw it, etc. It was incredible. The weather was beautiful and a perfect day to be out on the water. We saw several Indo Pacific Humpback dolphins, a huge colony of fur seals, and HUNDREDS of common dolphins. The guides told me I was VERY lucky to see so many common dolphins in the bay because they are not actually common. We travelled across the whole length of the bay following them as they were feeding. I took some awesome pictures and video. I'm not a huge dolphin person, but this was fascinating.

After the boat ride, Tracey and I went out to collect food fod the fishes in the aquarium. We caught minnows in an estuary, and used sand pumps to find prawns. When we returned, they had ME clean out the aquarium. I had to change into my bathing suit and jump into the aquarium with all the fish :) Basically I was just in there to scrub the glass and rocks.

In the afternoon we collected more fish and crabs to put in the aquarium. When I returned to the house I was exhausted.

Becuase I am the only volunteer, I have a great deal of one on one time with Tracey, so I get to pick and choose what I do. Here's the plan for the next month: Marine guiding certification, competant crew certification for boat handling, and PADI Open Water Diving :) :) All things that will be awesome to put on my resume when I get home :) There is another girl coming to volunteer in about a week which will be nice. I'm sure I'll be ready to have other people around by then. Overall, everyone is very cool and I'm so excited and happy to be here. It's almost overwhelming. Wish me luck :)