The house at the botanical garden.

My tent!

A view of The Quill. My tent is back to the right of that big rock.

Our kitchen.

The pavilion where we like to relax and eat dinner.

The hammocks!

My bags arrived Monday evening so my tent is all set up and I am doing good. It is extremely hot and humid here and the work is really hard but all in all it is pretty much what I expected. My tent set up is pretty nice and comfortable and I fall asleep each night looking at the stars and listening to the ocean (and sweating). We camp near the house that is in the botanical garden which has a kitchen, bathrooms, hammocks and cold beer. Oh and fresh water. The shower is broken so we have to go to town to shower but we are there each day to play in ocean anyways. The botanical gardend is very earth friendly: everything in the garden is grown organically, all the water besides the drinking water is collected from the rainfall, and the power is all supplied by solar panels.

I have gone snorkeling the past few days and have seen quite a few turtles, a nurse shark, a stingray, an eel, and bunches of really adorable fish. So far we don't have any sea turtles nesting on the beach and nobody is quite sure why. It has been dreadfully hot and the black sand is actually boiling eggs so that is most likely the reason. Pretty good one! We have been working in the medicinal garden and will be making new trails around the Quill which is the dormant volcano on the island (we camp at the base of it). We hiked up and inside the Quill yesterday! It was pretty difficult at times but was totally awesome inside. Once you go over the rim of the volcano there are ropes tied to trees for you to hang on to b/c it is very steep and dangerous. We saw a Scorpian Spider that looks like a spider with scorpian pinchers in front (freaky but cool) and some snakes and some huge (like really huge) old trees down at the bottom.

I am going to try to upload photos next week but won't have internet on the weekends. I have been told the internet is too slow to upload photos but some say it works so I will give it a shot!

Hope everyone at home is doing good! I miss you all!

I'm here!

I made it to Statia about 30 min ago. It's very hot but very cute! My bags are temporarily lost but will hopefully be here in a few hours. We will see! The adventures are already beginning!

About to head out!

Well I have a few more things to do and then I will be ready to head to St. Louis to catch my flight. I am anxious to hurry up and get to St. Eustatius and see what things are like. It still feels surreal and will probably remain so until I am setting up my tent by myself in the sweltering heat while insects attack me.

For those of you that don't know much about where I am going and what the program is all about, here is a little write up they have:

The St. Eustatius National Parks Foundation (STENAPA) is the only environmental organisation on St. Eustatius (Statia), and was established in 1988 with the primaryobjective of protecting terrestrial and marine areas of ecological, scientific, and culturalsignificance. The foundation started off extremely small with a few minor projects andgained importance and standing when, in 1996, STENAPA was legally mandated by theisland government to protect and manage the newly declared Marine Park. In 1998,STENAPA was also assigned the authority to manage the Quill and Boven NationalParks. Shortly afterwards, the Miriam C Schmidt Botanical Garden was created.STENAPA currently manages three sectors: the Marine Park, National Parks, andMiriam C Schmidt Botanical Garden.

And here is a link to the the STENAPA website:

http://www.statiapark.org/ 

I will have internet access so I will update this blog and link it to Facebook so you all can keep track of me!