Nave Italia drps the anchor in Cala Maestra bay in Montecristo -

During the night the captain and the crew navigated to Monte Cristo.  When we awakened this morning, we were moored at the magnificent Cala Maestra Bay.  I won’t blog much about the experience on the island as I know several of the teens will be sharing their experience first hand.  I can only say that Monte Cristo Island is a protected nature preserve of Italy.  It is uninhabited, and one is only able to visit the island after securing formal permission from Italy’s environmental office(Guardia Forestale).  Thankfully, the Nave Italia processed the paperwork ahead of time and the entire group was given a tour of the island, culminating in a hike to the top of the mountain and a spectacular view of blue sea and fragrant vegetation.  The natural vegetation of Monte Cristo is wild thyme, rosemary, cisto and elicriso.  The scent of these plants fills the air and we could even smell the spicy, floral aroma 200 meters out on the boat. 

Pasta is the main hit! Thank you Bruno and Gabriele.

Hi everyone. We have left Elba Island and are opening sails toward Montecristo Island. There is no internet connection around Montecristo and we will be in the open sea for much of the time so I will probably not be able to add any new entries for the next 1.5 days.

Here Stefano and Melissa climbing the masts

Round table discussion of economics.  Not an easy topic for teens to grasp.  The members of this voyage (adults & teens included)  don’t have answers to the current financial crisis, but by the end of today’s session the youngsters had articulated a set of thoughtful and serious questions to today’s current world leaders.

Evening:

We went out on the upper deck of the ship and sat under a dark sky illuminated by a full moon and countless stars.  To prepare everyone for tomorrow’s adventure on Monte Cristo Island, Ragga told the story of the Count of Monte Cristo and how his story connected to the island we were sailing to.  Ragga is an amazing story-teller and we were eagerly listening to every word she spoke.  The moonlight reflecting on the dark waves created a dramatic backdrop for this incredible story and we all headed to bed to dream of hidden treasure, love, revenge, secret identities, and a beautiful, mysterious island. 

I am Rosella writing again.  Today  is July 6. After we left  Elba island last night,  Ragga told us the story the Count of Monte Cristo. The story starts with a poor man who is put in prison. He meets a priest who speaks of the island of Monte Cristo when there is a huge treasure. The priest dies and the man changes clothes with the dead man. By pretending to be dead, he is able to get free.  He sees a ship  that lets him work as a cleaner of the ship.  One day  the ship passes an island, but he doesn’t know that it is the island of Monte Cristo until the captain tells him. He pushes a small rescue boat from the ship into the ocean and he uses it to get to the beach. He go to the monastery because the priest told him that the treasure could be found in the ruins of the monastery.  He goes to the monastery and starts to dig in the dirt.  Finally he finds the treasure of gold and jewels. He reconstructs the ship and goes to France.  The island has always been uninhabited, but he can buy the island with coms of the treasure money. Today we go in the Monte Cristo Island to visit.  After we arrived at the island we went up the mountain and after we visited the house of the Savoia. We ate lunch and played volleyball. It was very nice.    

Yesterday's activities consisted of: daily cleaning of the ship followed by apnea diving. After lunch, we traveled to Elba Island where we enjoyed a swim in the rocky beach waters. After a gelato, we headed into a shady grove of pines to continue our discussion of the environment. This time the discussion urged the teens to express and cultivate their own opinions of the environment and environmental policy. By the end of the session they had reached agreement on several points, which will be written into the YPG8's final document. It was amazing to see these teens speak so confidently and clearly about this complex issue. Pictured below - photos from the discussion on Elba Island.

Here is a brief interview with Antonio Sarnataro, the Nostromo, (the boatswain) a member of the Italian Navy's Nave Italia crew. Sometimes in the afternoon he has been organizing a step aerobics class on the main deck. On occasion, he has done 2 classes in a row to accommodate all the young people, educators and crew(!):

"Buon Giorno. Step class: it is one of the activities that we organize to help the teens to have fun. It's nothing more than that. It is beautiful for me to see them smiling. That gives me joy -- it's my energy."

Here below is the Nostromo who has suddenly found his second calling as ship step instructor:

Hi my name is Novisa. It’s the 6th day on the ship and its been amazing. I have done so many once in a lifetime things in the past days. I jumped off the bow spirit which is 10 meters above the ocean. We all went free diving seeing fishes and swimming up to 5 meters underwater without a tank. Those are just the extra activities. All of us have had very heated debates on international problems coming up with policies for our paper that will be presented when the trip is done. They even recreated an international conference with USA, BRIC, the G77, AOSIS, and environmental NGOs. Elba Island has been a dream come true. It is beautiful, the water is crystal clear and the sun is shining bright everyday. So far it has and will be an unforgettable experience.

Hello my name is Janne. I’m 16 years old and I come from Kiel which is in Germany. And I would like to tell you something about our day. Today we did free diving. I like it because when you are in the water and everything is quiet it is a moment where you can forget about everything else. But I think it is also a little bit frightening because you know that you are only a little piece in a very huge ocean. As a result I think that this was a very good experience for everybody who did it. In the afternoon we went to Elba Island. There we swam and we were on the beach. And with an ice cream or a drink in the hand we moved into the shadow. There we continued our discussion from last evening about the environment. But today we represented our own opinion and not the opinion of the BRIC, USA, EU, AOSIS, NGO’s, Business Alliance or the G77. It was a very fascinating and interesting discussion. And there were a lot of new aspects to talk about. One of them was that we thought about the population of the world and that the population is growing very, very fast. And when the population grows more and more energy will be needed. We talk about this and many other things which are important for the future of the world and for the future of our climate and environment. At the end we composed a few more paragraphs for our resolution. After another swim we returned to the ship. In my opinion it was a very great day because we combined a lot of fun and also interesting work. I hope I will have a lot of more beautiful days here on board of the ship. Pictured: Janneke (with Amy) at the environmental discussion.