Almirama (cont.)

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Entry for September 16 2006: Waiting for the boat.
IMGP0096-amped-half


The hotel managed to not wash the bag of clothes that I dropped off to 'housekeeping' yesterday, so I board the boat with a bag full of stinky clothes.
 
I exit the hotel and find the other volunteers out the front of the hotel, and we all meet Ricardo, our captain.
We pile into a van, and were driven to the resort town and marina of Almirama.
I’m spending the next two weeks on a dolphin research vessel which is a restored historic Norwegian fishing ship called the Toftevaag.


Ricardo told us a story of when they were stripping the boat down. They pulled up some old flooring and found some old maritime charts.
IMGP0136One of which had a swastika stamped in the corner (they reckon the fishing boat had been requisitioned.) Another had what looked like an annotation of an island that the crew had discovered.
Our mission is a long term study of Mediterranean cetaceans which will hopefully crystallise into a network of marine protected areas.

This little adventure is a volunteer program run by EarthWatch.
Here is their website if you want to check it out...
http://www.earthwatch.org




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