Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Time Flies and Adventures Begin...

Sunset at the Cottage
I have often mentioned how quickly time can travel on this island and this last month has been no exception. I have successfully completed my first semester at Saba University School of Medicine and in January of 2013 I will be entering second semester. I'm not going to lie, the last month of medical school has been a lot of work and sadly we have lost a few of our classmates with whom we have grown really attached. On this island we become a really tight knit community and it is really hard to say goodbye to even one person. The frustrating part is that some have just missed passing one course by a small margin and will be stuck repeating just that course and it makes me really admire their dedication. They will become part of the January class and will graduate with that class instead of ours.  As much as there is loss there is celebration also because many of my classmates have faced an incredible challenge and achieved a huge success! Personally i'm not sure I have ever felt such a great sense of relief as when I found out all of my final grades! In reality this is just a beginning but for many of us it is a reinforcement that we are meant to be here and that with enough work that we can do it!

My company at the cottage
As the semester finished and the holiday started the majority of my classmates headed home on planes destined for cities all over north america (and a few outside of there too) to spend the holidays with their families. While it is hard for me to remain on Saba for the holidays I know that I am not alone, there are currently 5 of us who will not be heading home for Christmas. Two of those are travelling throughout the Caribbean and both have family coming to visit them for a vacation. While I know I am missing Christmas at home this gives me a great opportunity to get to know the island better and do some diving which just happens to be one of my favourite hobbies.

I can't move to my new apartment until January 1st so currently I am staying a my friends gorgeous cottage! The cottage is just up the hill from Windwardside and it has the most stunning view over the ocean and the most beautiful sunsets!

Ok and ready to descend!
So far I have been on holidays for just under a week and have already spend three full days diving. I have been going with a company called Sea Saba and have been really impressed! They offer us students a really great deal on a package of 10 dives which never expire so you can buy a package and dive as often as you like or spread them out over your stay on Saba. They also offer really great deals on the courses so that its affordable for the students to get in the water.

The first day I went diving was sunday and I hadn't been diving in a very long time so I sat out the first deeper dive and then went for the second dive. It didn't take me long to remember why I love it so much. You drop into the ocean and then you are just engulfed in this big blue ocean, you can't really see the bottom yet but you get excited because you never know what you are going to find. As you descend you can start to make out the shapes and colours of the reef but can't really see the details. The closer you get the more defined everything gets and suddenly you can make out all the life. There is something for everyone on a dive, some people like the fish, some people like the coral and some people really like looking closely and finding the little things like nudibranchs, shrimp, and baby fish.

One of my favourite shots: At the 3rd Encounter (Pinnacle),
A GIANT Green Moray Eel and Nurse Shark all in one frame
Since that dive I have definitely hit some of the highlights of my diving experiences like doing a night dive which was the most insane experience I have ever had! There were sharks everywhere, they were using our lights to hunt with and some of them literally swam inches underneath me. I had one particular "buddy" who was about 6' long and hung around with me for most of the dive. Often getting in the way of me seeing anything other than him, it was a pretty wicked experience. If you covered your light during the dive and moved around the water with your hand it glowed with bio-luminescent plankton so I spent most of the dive alternating between having my light on and sitting in pitch black playing with the plankton. We also saw an octopus which was wicked, it almost seemed to glow green and there were lobster out and about everywhere!

Coral banded shrimp on the pinnacle, because my flash
worked in the crevice the colours are true rather than
washed out like many others!
Another of my favourite experiences so far was diving the pinnacle which is what Saba is known for. We dove the "3rd Encounter" dive site which peaks at about 30 meters of water (which is pretty much recreational limit) and is known for its larger sea life. On this dive because it is so deep you really spend a long time dropping into the blue with no signs of the reef visible but we were surrounded by schools of fish so we had plenty to look at. You drop onto a platform and then swim out over the edge of the platform to reach the pinnacle which is rising out of the depth and all around the pinnacle are all sorts of corals and gorgeous sponges. At the pinnacle itself we saw a couple of eels, a really cool coral banded shrimp and lots of fish. I took pictures but because I don't have a good enough flash on my camera my pictures just get washed out but in reality the entire pinnacle is bursting with colour. Then after we spent our 5 minutes at the pinnacle itself we headed back onto the platform where we were met by the most gigantic green moray eel I have ever seen as well as two nurse sharks and a couple of caribbean reef sharks. Before I came to Saba I had never had the fortune of seeing a shark while diving (I have done 35 dives prior to coming here) and from the moment I got in the water on Saba while snorkelling I have seen a ton! Mostly nurse sharks but also a couple reef sharks.

Overall it has been an amazing vacation and I cannot wait to go hiking and spend some more time under the water. I am also excited because me staying here gives me a chance to be one of the first people to greet the new students and show them the Saba I have come to love!

Latte I made with my Christmas Present!
Plus I also want to say thank you to my amazing Dad for the best Christmas presents a med student could ask for... My espresso machine and a gift certificate to buy non school books over the holidays! And my Mom and Nanny for giving me the chance to do all this awesome diving! You guys have given me to best presents and the best holiday I could have asked for! Thank you!




Spotted Moray


Smooth trunkfish hunting in the sand

Waves breaking at Wells Bay

Sunset at Wells Bay



C. Testing out the Famous Hot Sands at Hot Springs Dive Site


Check out the huge barrel sponge! They are
found all over the reef here!

Three Caribbean Spiny Lobsters

Batwing Crab

School of Tarpon just hanging out

Flamingo tongue

Barracuda buddy hanging out under the boat


Spot the stingray

Lettuce nudibranch


Pinnacle!


Yellowcheek Jawfish, these guys are gorgeous underwater



Sharptail Eel I discovered on one of our dives at a site
calledBabylon