Day 10 - Starry Starry Night

On Saturday mourning we woke up after our first day of camping. Some of the students have never been camping before and had not enjoyed their first night sleeping in a tent. When we first woke up some people were a little crabby especially because it was still raining, but they quickly cheered up when we started the days activities. The first thing we did was explore Preacher’s Cave. Preacher’s Cave was a huge open cave near the ocean. It was the first place the Spanish explorers known as the Eleuthera Explorers first discovered in the 17^th century. It got its name because there is a natural rock formation in the cave that functions as a preachers pulpit.

After exploring the cave for  a while we packed up the camping gear and loaded up the vans. We traveled to the narrowest point on the island, which is a place called Glass Window Bridge. The bridge is a narrow strip of rocky ground, surrounded by rocky cliffs , that is bordered on one side by the dark blue Atlantic Ocean and by the crystal clear Caribbean on the other side.  It was awe-inspiring to see the power of the waves that were eroding the small strip of land.  Scotty told us that soon the bridge will be completely gone and  Eleuthera will be divided into two different smaller islands.  We explored and took some photos for a while before boarding the vans and travelling to the nearby Queen’s Baths. It was a small inlet in the limestone cliffs that had been dug out by the waves and the wind. There were small tidal pools that were filled with interesting sea life. While we were there we were buffeted with sea spray from the waves crashing into the rocks. We explored for about an hour and then decided it was time for lunch. We then traveled to a nearby settlement and ate lunch there.

Our trip continued down to Hatchet Bay to see a cave. When Scotty told us that their might be bats in the cave. Some of us were a little apprehensive about going into the cave. However he assured us that it would be fine and everyone eventually went into the cave. The cave was one of the coolest things we have seen on the trip, and we waded through freezing waist deep water with only our flashlights for light. At one point Scotty had us turn all the flashlights off and we were in total darkness. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face it was so dark. He then told us a scary story and terrified us.  Once we got to the deepest part of the cave we discovered a small cavern filled with clay. We painted ourselves with Lucian war paint and headed back up to the surface. We climbed out of the cave using a rope ladder, whistling the Indiana Jones theme song. As we exited the cave the sun came out and it stopped raining.

            We then hiked to a nearby salt pond, to clean off our war paint. This took some serious scrubbing but when we were clean we snorkeled in the pond and found some sea horses. We swam around for a while and observed the sea horses for a while and then headed to our campsite for the night.

            We were camping on a beach near an old abandoned US naval base. We set up camp and searched the beach for some firewood. We used this wood to build a campfire and then Kate and Scotty cooked everyone some quesadillas.  After dinner Ben decided that he was unable to endure the tent for another night and built himself a makeshift lean-to to sleep in. It was very impressive and was better than the tents. After he was finished we played a game called mafia until around 9 o’clock. After that most of the class was tired from the busy day that we  had had and went to bed. However the boys walked up and down the beach and looked at the stars.  There was no light pollution and so the stars were the best that we had ever seen.  After that we put out the campfire and went to bed for the night.

 - Brian Drockton