Student Takeover: Lilah Marsh's Day in Jorts at Sa Dragonera

This blog post is written by Lilah Marsh, one of our Global Navigators, pictured in her newly acquired jorts.

Waking up at 6:45 might not be ideal, but stepping out into cool air in the morning for the first time on the whole trip was amazing. The whole group met up in Plaza de España and spent some hectic minutes trying to get into our groups. This was kind of a struggle because it was eight in the morning and all of us were running on four hours of sleep. When we (finally) got to the dock where the boat that would take us to Dragonera Island was we still had to wait 30 minutes to get on because our group was last. We sat around and did yoga and planks and were very athletic for about five seconds. Once we boarded the boat to Dragonera Island that’s when things started to get exciting. The boat ride was really nice it was hot out but the wind was nice and we were on the ocean so it wasn’t horrible. We got to the island and it was absolutely beautiful.

The first thing I noticed about the island was the amount of lizards that were on it. There were swarms of lizards climbing on us and our food, almost to a point where it was gross but at the same time it was super cool. We began by splitting up into groups and my group started with snorkeling. We went down into a little cove and the water was unbelievably transparent. The first thing I noticed when we dove into the water was how warm it was. It was beautiful! We snorkeled for a while and observed an insane amount of fish, invertebrae, and posedónia, the kind of seaweed that is prominent here. It was amazing! The only bad part was that I got stung by a sea anemone which is not really the best experience and a lizard pooped on me which wasn’t super cool. We walked around with Bea, who showed us all sorts of invertebrae on the shore.

After we finished this we had to go on a hike. Normally I am not a hiking person and was not looking forward to this, but it was maybe the highlight of the day. I got to walk through a beautiful island with a bunch of friends and it wasn’t even that difficult. The island was gorgeous, the path was flat, not very treacherous, and the views were unbelievable. The water was turquoise the sky was bright blue, and the heat wasn’t so bad.

After we returned from the hike we were all pretty tired and hot and sat down for lunch. It was nice except for the fact that the lizards decided that they wanted to prey on us. There were lizards coming from every which way, you had to constantly swat at them and they were not scared of you. They were climbing all over us, our food, our bags, anything that was exposed. The lizards reminded me of the pigeons in New York. We took the boat back and got to explore a little town, buy souvenirs, and spend some time with our friends before heading home. All in all it was a great day.