Finally got around to making a post about my ecology course’s camping trip to Cocos Island, a tiny islet near Southern Guam. It was BEAUTIFUL. I loved the feeling of being so intimately connected with nature, a feeling I haven’t had in a long time, sadly. I haven’t been camping in years, and this was just for one night but we made the most of it.
To start, we arrived there quite late in the afternoon around 4 pm and trudged from the old Cocos dock to our camping area, heavily laden with tents, bags, or backpacks. I set up my tent a little off to the side, surrounded behind and on each side by half-flower trees. I set up my tarp, then erected my tent over it in about 15 minutes (ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED).
After depositing my belongings inside, I helped out a few classmates who had brought huge, unwieldy tents and had no idea where the poles would go. To be honest, I had no idea where half those poles would go too, but we figured it out eventually. There were about 27 students there, along with a few others who came to chaperone so it was a large group that was split into smaller groups to carry out tasks like water measurements and such at allotted times. My time wasn’t until 4 am, so I could relax and try to get some sleep.
Although I didn’t know it some of my classmates had gone ahead and set up what to bring to barbeque and cook ahead of time on Guam, so that night after our professors retired they set to it, cooking mussels, steak, and all kinds of things over the fire. I was pretty tired so I tried to sleep but ended up napping and woke up around 11 pm with a light rain falling and cold breeze blowing through our camp site. Because I couldn’t sleep, I ventured outside. Luckily I was wearing a rain jacket, but was still shivering from the breeze. Most of my classmates had gone to sleep but a few were still up around the fire for warmth, so I settled there and had a few great late night conversations. When it began to rain harder I went back in around 2:30 am to try to get a few more hours of sleep.
Before it hit 4 am one of my groupmates came to my tent to wake me. I felt around in the half dark for my clothes, and regretfully left my warm blanket and tent behind. My group began to assemble, and we began to carry out our shore measurements, recording everything in a notebook.
By the time we finished, the sun was beginning to peek out, making the light appear gray, then pink, then finally orange and high in the sky. We returned to the campsite to find everyone mostly awake around my professor who was giving out directions to how we were going to survey. We proceeded to pick numbers for how far along we would be surveying, from Point 1 being closest to the resort to point 28 being the farthest. I was around 18. Our surveys took about two hours time total, and by the time we were done it was mid morning and we set back to the camp to freshen up and pack up if need be, then eat breakfast. It was a beautiful day, bright and hot. I chose to stay behind as some students left early, to eat and spend a little more time with the rest. By the time our ferry came at 11 am though, I’m sure everyone was tired of each other’s faces and just wanted to be back in their beds, showered and clean. It would’ve made the trip a lot more interesting if we had been allowed to swim, I think.
No worries, as it was the first time for me to set up a tent on my own without help I’m confident I can bring it down to 15 minutes or less when I am out there with classmates to help or even on my own. I’m excited! I want to give the tent a review as well as another future post on how the camping trip with my 25+ person class goes. The last time I went camping was high school for a 4th of July weekend that was completely devoid of parades of any sort and instead consisted of a beautiful family-centric weekend at the picturesque Obyan Beach for three days, where my family fished, the kids slept on the beach on mats under the stars, and we all got sunburns and bonfire burns. Nostalgia..
The Motivated Mermaid 