OK, so we started off with good intentions, but here we are on day 5 and this is our first post!!!
Quick summary so far...
Day 1 was a journey day - really started at 4pm UK time on Sunday, and ended at 1pm Greek time on Monday! We were just a little tired.... However, one of the advantages of being repeat volunteers is that everything starts to make more sense - Athens bus station was a breeze this year - we knew we had plenty of time, so we stayed in relative comfort in the airport until about 4:30am, arrived at the bus station just as the ticket office opened and knew exactly where to go to in the bus station! Whereas last year, we had no clue and struggled to find anyone that could understand any English...
Once we got to Vonitsa, we met up with the other volunteers (Tyler and Julie) in the bar, then one of the staff members (Malvina) met us shortly afterwards and took us to the house. Much nicer than last year - very roomy. Plus Posie is allowed in the house, whereas last year he had to stay outside! Then we had a few training bits and pieces before dinner.
Day 2 (Tuesday) - after a good (and much needed!) night's sleep and breakfast, our first boat trip. No dolphins on the transects, but we saw a few on the way out. However, we did have a great experience with a loggerhead turtle, which just hang around the boat for ages! First time we've touched a wild turtle that hasn't been in a net! We were a bit worried it might be sick, but there was nothing obviously wrong - it just seemed really chilled (or lazy!).
On the way back, we came across a pod of dolphins - since it wasn't on a transect we didn't have to record any data, so we could relax (as much as Joan would let anyone relax!), watch the dolphins and (try to) take photos - unfortunately our camera focusses a bit too slowly to get decent dolphin photos, but we got a load of nice pictures of sea...... A great start to the project!
In the evening we went to Remezzo's taverna for a celebratory dinner - Joan was very excited that they had chicken roll (and we were very excited by the hot chocolates!) Major disappointment though - no ice cream yet so no chocolate milkshakes! They promised to have ice cream soon though...
Day 3 (Wednesday) - another good night's sleep, then out for another boat trip. This time we had dolphins on the transect so we followed them for a couple of hours, recording data this time. A little stressful, but probably more so for Malvina than for us as she's still learning her job and Joan can be a touch sharp when he's trying to do loads of things at once (eg drive the boat, take photos, keep an eye on the dolphins and keep an eye on Malvina and the volunteers)! Then lots of photo cropping in the afternoon.
Day 4 (Thursday) - dolphins within about 30 seconds of the start of the transect, so we followed them for ages. Only a small group (6 in total) today but it included a lovely newborn. Followed by pita for lunch at Nico's, then photo cropping and ID. We managed to ID all 5 adult dolphins in the catalogue so a succesful afternoon! Even managed not to have a snooze today - we walked to the local island (which we didn't manage to do last year).
Day 5 (Friday) - this time the dolphins made us wait until nearly the end of the transect, and they were not well behaved today - didn't seem to know where they wanted to go so it was really hard to keep track of them. Another newborn! Just finished lunch, had a snooze (well, Elaine did anyway), thought we'd do a quick blog to get up to date, then back for some more photo ID. Oh, and great news - Remezzo's now has ice cream so we had our first milkshakes of the trip!
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