Day 14 - Last Day :-(

Today was our final day. Emotions were soaring as we ate our final breakfast here at the Island School. We began the day with the most challenging exercise yet: the run swim. In this exercise we were constantly shifting between running and swimming, which pushed us to our physical limits. After our exercise, we began to clean our dorms and pack up. The main event of the day was spending the day at the beautiful Lighthouse Beach. The Lighthouse Beach is famous for its beautiful powdery sand and landscape. We enjoyed the day by playing catch, playing soccer, or tanning. Others also buried Ryan and Cailin in the sand, made sand castles with awesome motes, or watched Cailin, Sara, and Lauren try to body surf,. The day passed right under our noses, as we found ourselves suddenly feasting on the last supper at the Island School. We retired to the Octagon for our usual evening meeting, where Sal and Laura gave us their final thoughts and we discussed our highs and lows of the trip. Now here we are, typing this blog when we really should be packing and sleeping, so see you all at Lyndhurst soon! J

Day 13 - Cookies

  This morning began with a run down to the Marina. The cold water woke us all up as we jumped off the ledge into the current cut for the second time. Half of the group made the mistake of swimming too close to the center, and got swept out by the current. Fortunately, everyone was able to grab hold of the side before they ended up deeper in the ocean. Everyone was eventually able to swim upstream against the strong current, grabbing onto mangroves on the perimeter and pulling themselves forward. Many of us saw a large barracuda and some stingray inches below our feet. We ran back to campus as a group, where another delicious pancake breakfast awaited us. Once full, Mr. Wilson introduced the day’s plan, which involved extensive research on a sustainable energy source, within groups. The five topics were Solar, Biodiesel, Wind Energy, Passive Solar, and Biodigestion. We spent the entire day talking to CEI research managers who helped us formulate an understanding of our topic and how it could be applicable to our lives back home. Later in the day, we all conveniently raided the kitchen as Riley’s famous sweet and salty chocolate chip cookies were being taken out of the oven.  They were AMAZING! Thank goodness there were enough for everyone to have seconds (and thirds for a fortunate few).  Tonight we listened to am awesome presentation on lionfish, an invasive species that has taken over the east Atlantic.  Leaving the presentation in the octagon, we were all wishing we could go spear fishing tomorrow at the lionfish derby, an event promoting education on lionfish.  But tomorrow we will be at the beach all day. Bummer! After that we listened to three of the groups’ jazzy research presentations (Solar, Wind, Biodigestion).  Now we’re finally ready to hit the hay in preparation for our culminating fitness challenge… the RUN SWIM! 6:30 AM! Be there… We’re pumped. Goodnight everybody!

Peace Out,

Colleen and Liam  

Days 11 and 12 (Fenting – Fake Tenting)

For the last two days, we’ve adventured on a down island camping trip. We started off waking up at 7am Saturday morning, and started packing our gear and supplies for our trip.

We loaded up the vans and hit the road immediately after breakfast. Our destination: the campsite outside of Preacher’s Cave.

Along the way we made multiple stops, the first of which was the Rock Sound Market, where Justin (the assistant head of the Island School) told us to split up into groups of 3 or 4. He assigned each group a specific set of grocery items, and told us to pay attention to the price and where they’re from. What we collectively gathered as a group, is that the majority of Eleuthera’s goods are imported, which accounts for the price being significantly greater than we’re accustomed to. 

The second stop we made was in a settlement called Palmetto Point, where we went to see their sacred Silk Cotton Trees. These trees are colossal and elegant, and hold significant meaning to the people of Island. These trees are generally located at the center of each settlement, and are a vestige of their African Heritage. It is believed that the ancestor’s of their families live in the tree, and has become a major focal point of the settlement.

Continuing on our road trip, we stopped at Governor’s Harbor for lunch. It is considered one of the oldest settlements on the Island, and our task was to talk to the locals and learn interesting things about the area. For instance, it is believed that Black Beard the Pirate passed through the settlement, and sunk a ship off the coast of the harbor. A lot of us also went to their famous bakery, and indulged in some beef patties (which were delicious!)

After Governor’s Harbor we went to Gregory Town where we quickly went gift shopping, and some got ice cream at the local store.  Gregory Town is actually where Lenny Kravitz has a Green home and recording studio!  We got the chance to pass the end of his driveway, but it was gated so we could not see much.

We then finally arrived at our base camp, and hastily set up our tents so we could head out to our final stop of the day.

Our final destination was Harbor Island (Briland as Keanu calls it), which is considered the up-scale “Hollywood” side of Eleuthera. There, we were given a few hours to explore and eat dinner, where a lot of the group ate at The Queen Conch and the Pizzeria. Allie may have temporarily gotten over her missing of Charlie, when she took in a stray dog for a few hours. It was heartbreaking when he followed her all the way to the dock, where Ali stood at the back of the boat staring longingly into the dog’s eyes as we cruised away from the Island. A lot of people also visited it’s pink sand beach, which was stunning! The sand is like powdered sugar, which an anonymous source described as being similar to “wiping out in butter”. It was the most beautiful beach Ryan’s ever seen. It was a bit of a bummer that the majority of the shops and restaurants closed at 6pm, but we still had an awesome time.

Then we went back to the camp site and immediately fell asleep from exhaustion. Unfortunately, Cailin, Lauren, Kirsty, and Sara’s tent was less than desirable (and less than functional). Instead of a tent, they were sentenced to sleeping under a propped up tarp, on top of another tarp, tied down by rocks, held up by one pole in the middle. At first, everything seemed okay, but then the wind picked up. At 3am, Sara woke up to find the fent (fake-tent) crashing down on her and her tent mates. Kirsty, Lauren, and Cailin somehow didn’t realize that the fent collapsed, and Sara had to wake them up, and then proceeded to sprint to the van and spend the rest of the night in there. It was awesome.

The next morning we got up around 7, and packed up our tents and quickly ate breakfast before starting our adventure for today. The first thing we did was explore Preacher’s Cave, located directly behind our base camp. This is where the Puritan’s made their home after their ship, the Eleuthera Adventurer’s, crashed on a nasty reef called Devil’s Back Bone. The cave is ridden with sink holes that expose the sky and forest above it. It’s also believed to be a major burial site for not only the Puritan’s, but the Bahamas’s native Lucayans as well. 

After that we went to Ocean Hole, which is literally a hole in the ground filled with salt water, which we were able to jump into from 25 feet in the air (which is about 10 feet higher than High Rock). It was definitely one of the highlights of the camping trip.

We then traveled visited the Glass Window, which is the narrowest part of the entire Island, which is basically only a car’s width wide. It was incredible to see the calm Caribbean side and wild Atlantic on the other. We even saw a few sea turtles at the bottom of the cliffs on the Atlantic side. Ryan, Ali, Ben, Liam, Danny, Colleen, and Aaron, climbed down the Atlantic side as far as they could go, and were hit by the sprays of the gigantic waves of the Atlantic.

Our final stop on our trip, we visited the Bay Caves of Eleuthera. These caves are a sacred site to the Island, where one date recorded in the cave even traveled back to the 1700s! In the cave, we were able to see the famous Wedding Cake Stalagmite, which National Geographic even came to photograph. The cave hike was about a mile long, going in and out of various caverns and crawl spaces, and ending with wading through waist high water. In one portion of the hike, we were all told to link hands and turn all of the flash lights off, and had to lead each other through a portion of cave. Sara had a hard time with the exercise, but eventually was able to overcome her fear of caves and the dark. In the final leg of the cave, we were taken to a cavern filled with red clay, and used our bodies as canvases and gave each other war-paint which was super fun! To rinse off the clay, we went to a large landlocked salt water lake, which Justin mistakenly called “that little pond over there”. In the pond, we saw tons of sea horses, brittle sea stars, and giant crabs, because somehow these organisms got into the lake, and have no natural predators to regulate their populations.

We then traveled back to the Island School, relaxed, showered, and ate dinner: a typical Island School afternoon.

Overall, the camping trip was AMAZING! Everyone had tons and tons of fun.

See everyone soooooooooon!

Love,

Ryan and Sara

Ps. We chose Liam and Colleen to be tomorrow’s Caciques! (: 

Friday Dec. 9th

Apologies for the late entry - We were away for a little on a 'camping trip', which we will post about later tonight.  The following is from Friday December 9th...  =W=

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Whaddup C-town. Aaron and Allie coming to you live from the shores of the Bahamas. Woke up to a beautiful rainy morning, which unfortunately did not hold off for our three-mile run (chafe city).  We did get to see a d o u b l e rainbow, which was amazing.  Give us another place where you can see a double rainbow at 6:00 in the morning. Breakfast was delicious: stacks of pancakes with grade-A-maple syrup (props to Liam) and bowls of granola. The group boated out a mile and a half off shore, where we searched for a hidden cage for aquaculture research that is able to hold up to 7,000 fish. We got lost. The boat ride was rough, and a lot of us wanted to throw up but eventually we got there.  The water was incredibly blue and seemed to go on for eternity and we got a sense of how small we are in relation to the waters that surround us. At one point, we were swimming above thousandths foot depths of eerie darkness. The CEI team plans to raise Copiah fish next year. They are waiting for the eggs to hatch. Following lunch, Justin, the assistant head of the island school gave us an interesting presentation on the impacts of ecotourism. We learned of the past plans to develop the island and the devastating effects it had on the ecosystem. The class broke up into two groups that read different articles where we then debated about the topics. The Case for Responsible Tourism and Weighed Down by Ethical Baggage were the two articles. We compared and contrasted, ultimately giving us a greater understanding of real world applications of ecotourism. Alex, our intern working with us, then helped us prepare for our down island camping trip, which we will be going on tomorrow. We packed up tents, gear, and food to prepare us for our excursion in the wild. This will be the last blog for a couple of days. Unfortunately, the class got in a bit of trouble by accessing Facebook during our stay, so we lost all of our exploration time. We spent the rest of the afternoon in quiet reading time. Our day ended on a high note however, as we spent the night laughing at YouTube videos and looking through the various pictures accumulated from our trip so far; overall another great day on the island.

We’ll be home soon, though most of us wouldn’t mind a few more days in the warm weather.

Stay classy,

Aaron and Allie 

NEW SPECIES OF PB&J FISH FOUND AT KEMP’S CREEK!

Hello all, today is our ninth day, or more importantly, Karen’s birthday.

Our day commenced with a shortened morning exercise of makeshift capture the flip-flop (or as its known in Cleveland as capture the flag). Then we all set out to prepare for the day, our breakfast crew set up the grits, scrambled eggs and toast while Riley and Sara cut eight loaves of bread for sandwiches. Riley was ecstatic just to be in the kitchen while Sara’s cutting skills failed miserably. Allie and Colleen made a batch of the famous GORP (a.k.a. trail mix), unfortunately the excessive amounts of chocolate made it difficult for Becca to pick out the minimal amount of raisins in the batch. At the same time, the chores crew was gathering supplies and loading the boats for the CEI researchers.

At 9:15, after our delicious breakfast, we all met at the boathouse to collect our snorkel gear and drive off in the bio-diesel, manual transmission vans to Kemp’s Creek, which is a tidal creek a few miles down the road. Once we arrived, we had to trek down a closed road to reach the creek and the boats where the researchers were waiting for us. We immediately began setting up the extremely long nets to catch bonefish that were eating in the mangroves surrounding the creek. In this creek, during high tide, the bonefish come in to feed on the mangroves and surrounding plants, but then must leave before low tide in order to avoid suffocation. Therefore, our goal today was to capture the bonefish as they were in the process of leaving the creek area. Unfortunately, the net inevitably caught more than bonefish and mahara, we ended up having to free several barracudas, crabs, needlefish – not even Aaron & Liam’s PB&J fish were able to escape. After we collected our 82 bonefish, we placed them in our ocean nets to be tagged by the researchers. The tagging allows the researchers to not only track the fish’s growth and migration habits, but also the approximate total population living in certain areas. During this time, Colleen, Becca, Sami, Allie and Riley were on sandwich duty, which meant they were responsible for making sandwiches for all 27 students and researchers out at the creek today. During the day, everyone pitched into the capturing and tagging of the bonefish, including Allie who is beginning to conquer her fear of fish! After a very long day we all returned to the Island School and unloaded all of the gear from our day at sea.

After a very brief shower, we all congregated in the octagon to continue our lesson about bonefish, tagging and conch from the lead flats researchers at CEI, Julia and Dave. Remember, if you are going to eat fresh conch, make sure you eat it at Coco Plum’s! After the long day, we had personal reading time which included our allotted time to call home – everyone was so excited to hear from their families! Then we had a delicious dinner of rice, beans, cornbread and our typical amazing salad bar, which included the radishes we picked yesterday at the Island School farm. After dinner Karen and Riley were surprised when the whole class brought out a cake for their birthdays (no wonder Allie was trying so hard to keep Riley out of the kitchen). Just after everyone enjoyed their piece of yellow cake smothered with chocolate Pillsbury frosting, which Mr. Wilson actually frosted. Once again, Riley was completely in her element as she got to cut and serve cake to all of our hungry students. We ended the night with our typical highs and lows; it was no surprise to hear the majority of students complaining about their sunburns. Then, to help with our fish identification, we all sat down to watch Finding Nemo.

Night all, we’re going to celebrate Riley’s last three hours of being sixteen!

Allie and Aaron will fill you in with all our festivities tomorrow!

Love, Kirsty, Jen & Riley

Day 8 - SYCO!

Today we began the day with a crazy start led by Keanu, called Syco workout. It was a combination of cardio and upper body workouts that ran for about an hour. During which we had a lot of “screaming, yelling, and crying out loud” according to Keanu. After which we had a little downtime before a having the famed breakfast of granola, milk, and yogurt.


Later, we split into two groups by playing rock paper scissors. One group would go out to work with the permaculture, which is a theory of sustainable agriculture. Through talking with one of the C.E.I. workers named Josh, we were able to gain more information on how the Island School is sustainable wit their food sources. We got to see the ducks, pigs, and even pick radishes. Also, we learned a lot of great information about composting and the process of composting in the Bahamas. The others went with Keanu and Alex “Sal” to catch tilapia in the Aquaponics center to measure and gauge the size of the fish in the tank, though the second group beat the first in numbers caught and average fish per minute caught.

After that, most of us showered and went off to have a lunch of baked potatoes and left over lasagna, and it was fairly quiet since the Island School kids were out hanging on their last day in the Bahamas. Then we stayed in the dining hall and talked to Emory Lang, the head chef of the Island School. A graduate from The Culinary Institute of America and an Island School Alum, he has made many changes in the school including: the preservation of the food, the preparing their food, and the attitudes about cooking in general. Then we would take an hour trip to a farm run by Edrin Symonnette, who provides fresh produce to the Island School. He showed us how he grafts (also called budding) his plants, almost replicating crops, and showed us many goats, at which point Sara went crazy trying to pet one. Then some people had a chance to hold some baby goats who were only two days old. Also, a select few were able to try finger peppers that were extremely spicy for some, but not so much for others. Then we were given the opportunity to eat at a local restaurant called Coco Plumms, where we had the opportunity to have a burgers, lobsters, chicken, and even conchs. After dinner we traveled back to the dorm and finished off the day with a little review and highs, and lows of each of our days.


Tomorrow's Caciques will be Kirsty, Jen and Riley - so look forward to hearing from them tomorrow night!  We are going to spend the day doing Flats research out in the shining sun!  G'night!
Ben and Cailin

Day 7 - Yarkeefs (Yoga+Sharks+Reefs)

     With towels and yoga mats, we started our morning on top of the dining hall with the "sun salutation" and the sound of the ocean in the background. While some people struggled to touch their toes, others were able to stand on their heads with incredible balance. It was a start to a great day. 

     After a breakfast of grits, poached eggs, toast, and grapefruit, we gathered our snorkel gear in preparation for an afternoon spent in the water, among fish and coral. After having just learned about different species in class,  it was exciting to see the fish and plant life that we had just discussed, in their natural habitat. 

     We spent the morning at "Fourth Hole", a location previously a golf course, among hundreds of juvenile fish and colorful corals. Many of us were excited to follow around a 5 foot barracuda, see an octopus, a stingray, queen angelfish, eels, and squirrel fish. The reef provided an opportunity to get 'up close and personal' with the animals we had just seen on power-point slides. 

     Discovering a flat tire, we were forced to make shuttle runs back to CEI with our remaining functional van. Everyone got back just in time for a lunch of stir fry, barley, black bean soup, and salad. With full stomachs, we made our way over to the boathouse to listen to Mike, a shark intern. Everyone, especially Sara (aka: Shark Bait) was excited to learn about Sharks, and get to see them. We leared about the sharks anatomy (they don't have bones), as well as the ongoing research projects at CEI to investigate these apex predators. Equipped with a bucket filled with dead fish, we made our way down to the marina, hoping to lure sharks to the ledge. Within minutes of tossing raw fish into the water, nurse sharks swarmed at our feet, dangling over the edge of the dock. They lingered around the area in a group of eight or nine, ranging from about 60 - 160 pounds. They consumed the fish quickly, and with a vacuum like noise. Some of us (brave Hawken students) leaned over the edge, dangling face first over the circling sharks, clinging to a piece of fish. Aaron went first after Mike's example, and was inches away from a Nurse shark's mouth. I (Colleen) went next, Sara holding my ankles as I leaned over the edge. I would love to be able to say that I fed a shark, bu t sadly, as it came up to the surface with a loud sucking sound and opened its mouth, I threw the bait at it's head. Still, a success.

     After the walk back from the Marina, we were given a lesson on coral reefs, and the organisms that we had seen earlier in the morning. We discussed the fragility of reefs, their limitations, biodiversity, and their advantages in an ecosystem. Following a long period of note taking, we split up for "exploration time". With a relaxing 45 minute break, we were all ready for dinner. Lasagna and garlic bread has never tasted so good. Even Sara and Cailin enjoyed it, while being "under siege" of a moth. (There was some screaming involved).

     We came back to the Octagon and discussed the impact of oil in our daily lives. Afterwards, we watched a movie on Cuba's response to an energy crisis, following the fall of the Soviet Union.

     My night ended, with Danny turning to me and asking, "would you mind, if i farted?"... Did any Ohioans hear it all the way from the Bahamas? (It was loud, and happened repeatedly..). (Oh yeah, Aaron was a bit gassy too, and got rejected from his room. Guess it's all the beans???) We've obviously all gotten pretty close :)

Another successful day in the sunny Bahamas. (We're all really tan)

Goodnight! :)

<3 Colleen and Danny