Zakynthos, Greece

well i have finally made it to my island. it was a long journey. when i got to Rome after 14 hours of being on a plane, i found out that my Olympic Airways flight was cancelled due to a 24 hour flight. Myself and about 18 other people were stuck in the airport. i was told to come back to the booth in an hour and i could potentially get onto an Alitalia flight that was scheduled to leave Rome several hours earlier than the flight that i was supposed to be going on. i was happy since that meant I'd be getting into Athens earlier. i would have gotten there at 10:15pm. when i got back to the Olympic Airways counter an hour later, the group of us waited at the Alitalia counter for about an hour before we discovered that they'd actually sold out on that flight and there were only about 4 seats left. our choice was to wait and see if more would not show up for their flight or go to a hotel paid for by Olympic airways. i opted for the hotel and decided that the turtles could wait and i would catch a flight the next day at 11am. i still had a whole day to get to my island. it was a long day. when i got into the Athens airport i caught a local bus to a bus depot and caught a coach bus to Pirelli where i caught a ferry to the island. by the time my taxi dropped me off at the campground, it was 11:30pm. there were two people sitting around the kitchen table. i couldn't believe how sketchy everything was. it was way dodgier than i had imagined. everyone else was out at a bar. it was the worst first impression ever!
i set up my tent, chatted with the people that stayed in, then went to bed.
the next day was much better. i got to go on a zodiac ride to one of the beaches that we do surveys at. we were just delivering supplies so that on Monday a group that will be stationed their for 6 days will have cutlery etc. this beach is owned by the World Wildlife Federation. no one is allowed to use it, not even locals. it's one of the largest loggerhead turtle nesting sites on the whole island. yesterday i was on a boat tour with a bunch of tourists. a group of us gave a slide show presentation of the turtles, ways to protect them etc and sold merchandise to support Archelon. Today i went back to the same beach at the first day and helped with the beach cleanup. that was soooo much work. i'm pretty tired. we collected about 50 bags of gargage and recycleable material. some of the gross and wierd things i found were: syringes, tampon applicators, drug vials, a baby sucker, toys, rope, nets, lots of plastic....
the people at the camp are all pretty cool so far. there are some people from Canada, UK, Australia, Greece, NZ, Austria, and France. in total there are about 15 of us. there are going to be more volunteers arriving soon too.
the weather here is great, it's about 25 C and there is a pool nearby at one of the hotels that we can use. the camp has cold showers and porta potties. so far the food has been pretty lame. way too much rice or pasta and not enough protein. i can see that i will be supplementing my diet at the restaurants. once a day, two volunteers have to make dinner. i'm not sure when my turn is yet. we have a schedule board where all are duties are listed for the week. we usually have to do about 6 hours of work a day. it's not a bad life at all. we've got lots of hammocks set up around the camp.
oh yeah, nothing is cheap on this island and that includes internet :(
when i figure out how to poste pictures here i will. i've got lots to make y'all jealous.