Wednesday, June 24

Hey Lady, You're Driving On the Wrong Side of the Road!

No, actually, that's normal here. Stay to the left is the rule of thumb here. I have adjusted and drove to Maho Bay last night and from/to Maho Bay today. The roads are narrow and winding and challenging when mixed with the need to drive the opposite of what I had been trained to do my whole life. I was surprised to find it only took me about one 30 minute drive to “get it” entirely.

I kicked off the work day today with a Hurricane Plan Meeting! More or less, the island gets shut down if landfall is imminent and likely. The hurricane season this year has good chance of being normal, not particularly bad and not particularly good. 24 hours before landfall, we'll shut down the park and get visitors to leave the park, from what I gather. We reviewed the Incident Command System (ICS) in the event of a hurricane and who will be doing what, where. Lets keep our fingers crossed that we don't have any bad hurricanes this year. I think in the event of a category 4 or 5, we'd need to evacuate to Puerto Rico or elsewhere, but I'm not sure.

I worked on my task plan for this internship a lot today and tried to tidy up my list of items I'll need to address while I'm here. There is much to explore in the park and plenty of people to meet. I'm hoping that as the next few weeks unfold I'll have more time to interact with the folks here on the island in the park and get a better feel for how visitor and employee safety is being evaluated and how I can help the situation.

On the way home today I stopped off at Trunk Bay and spent around an hour snorkeling and relaxing on the beach. Trunk Bay's underwater trail is worth a visit if you've never been snorkeling before. If you've been SCUBA diving, it's a nice reef that has some great shallow areas where macro shots are very possible with the clear water and gentle surf (in the summer). Fins are a must, or at least I found myself using them quite a bit to sit still for some shots and clips of movies I took underwater. I saw several couples swim along with no fins and just a mask and goggles. I think I'd get tired faster without fins, but that's just me. I had the ambitious goal of snorkeling around the entire island that fills Trunk Bay, but since I was snorkeling alone I thought better of it and stuck to the trail before heading back to shore. Next time I go out to Trunk Bay, hopefully I'll have a water buddy and attempt the lap around the island with a little more safety.

I've been awful about posting my blog updates each day, but now that I have internet at the home and in the office, I should be much better. Tonight, I've forgotten my charger at the office. I don't know how I forgot to unplug my charger, but I'm crossing my fingers that it's in the office. Perhaps I got confused with where I'd plugged it in and thought it was part of another computer, thus leaving it plugged in. Replacing a charger here in the USVI would be more than a hassle, so lets keep our fingers crossed that I'll find it first thing tomorrow in the Maintenance Office.