Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Shipwreck Beach & Hurricane Earl







 
So today I woke up to go grocery shopping with the Orientation group. Now of course I have been grocery shopping many, many times in my life, but this was a whole new experience. There was quite a bit of sticker shock as I went through the aisles. Let me give you an example. Coffee-mate coffee creamer was on sale for $17.99 EC, which is somewhere around $7 US and Kraft Singles were $12.99 EC (~$5 US). So anyway that was an experience, but at least I now have some food in the apartment! Later we all went to Shipwreck Beach even though we knew that the hurricane was coming. It was great! Shipwreck Beach is a black sand beach on the Caribbean. The water was warm and clear and even though the sun was hiding it was a great day for the beach. Minutes after arriving someone in my group stepped on a sea urchin and got a few barbs stuck in his toes. Everyone grouped around him and someone tried to get them out with a knife, which was unsuccessful. We were told after he got stung that the sea urchins like to hang out on the rocks and therefore it is a bad idea to walk on them so for the rest of the day we would all scream "rock" every time we bumped into one. Then we witnessed a dog fight on the beach. Apparently these dogs are neighbors and the big dog always tries to get to the little one. It was a little scary, but thanks to some helpful people both dogs were okay! On a more positive note we spotted a very large star fish and everybody took pictures with it! There was a small dock a little ways out and we swam out to it and sat out there for a while until the water started to get a little rough so we swam back. The wind started to pick up a bit but other than that it was nice so we spent a few hours in the shallower parts on the water digging around for shells and talking. I have quite the shell collection sitting on my dining room table right now! It started to get darker out so we all moved to the bar area where we sat and waited for our ride. While there we witnessed the same dog that started the last fight try to attack another little dog, but both were okay from that fight too! It started to downpour but finally Mr. Rogers came with the bus and we all got in. The rain stopped so Mr. Rogers decided it was a good time to take us on a little tour of the port area and downtown Basseterre. We finally got home and waited for Hurricane Earl to hit.

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