The wicked weather witch strikes again - Week 3 in Pez Maya
Hola gatos locos!
Once again we welcome you to Pez Maya, our very own Caribbean paradise...although it hasn’t been this week, with more wind making diving impossible. This has been squarely blamed on the newly christened ‘Liz Witch;’ banned from diving for 10 days due to fluid build up in one of her ears, the Liz Witch joked that she’d be praying for bad weather so that everyone could join her in her diveless misery. Half an hour after her return from the doctor the wind had picked up and the boats had been beached and the inclement weather carried on for three days!
Despite this more than half the group managed to get enough dive time to pass their Advanced Open Water courses and the rest should be able to finish at the start of next week. It was interesting to watch people wandering around with buckets on their heads to practice compass navigation, but the general consensus is that diving deeper is considered cooler – not just in terms of temperature.
Once we’re all certified we can get out and finally start monitoring the reef...As important as the information that we’ll be collecting is, we’re all having a really hard time thinking of it as work. We received a lecture earlier in the week detailing exactly what we’ll be doing out there and now we’re all itching to get started (or maybe that’s the mozzies).
No diving doesn’t mean no swimming, and we have discovered that there is a very good reason for the rule “Swim only between 07.30 - 18.00”. Some lucky EMs swimming at 17.45 discovered that the sharks start cruising for their dinner around dusk; needless to say, the water was exited very quickly when the fin was spotted.
Unfortunately the crocodiles weren’t quite as obliging as the sharks when we went to the lagoon for a croc spot on Thursday evening. The most exciting thing we spotted was Jax slipping in the mud and falling flat on her bum…Sadly there are no pictures of this...
Saturday morning saw a horrific ‘accident’ involving most of the staff. Mike electrocuted himself, the force of which threw him from his ladder into a wall, cracking his skull open; the falling ladder smashed into Rob and crushed one of his legs. Luke slipped in the ‘blood’ (ketchup?) pouring from Mike’s head, fell off the step and landed right next to the rarely-sighted deadly weightbelt snake – what are the odds? No wonder Laura was hysterical – her staff had been decimated in less than a minute! Luckily there were 22 newly trained Emergency First Responders ready to leap into action, although 2 leapt a little too quickly and were attacked by the aforementioned snake, adding to the carnage. We are pleased to report that everyone survived apart from Mike, who will be sadly missed.
On a lighter note our trips into Punta Allen to teach English to the local kids have started. So far 12 of us have headed down to the small fishing village with Lluvia and we’ve all loved it. The last group took a piñata with them which was much appreciated (and demolished) by the children – please note that the chokocrak was removed before the children got to it.
Although most of have now passed our coral, algae, adult and juvenile fish tests there is still a lot to learn. Sam gave a lecture about the various birds that can be found in the Reserve; in addition to our daily bird spots we’re now keeping our eager eyes peeled for anything new. So far we’ve had a couple of ospreys, various vultures, plenty of frigate birds and brown pelicans, Scooty Puff (the tropical mockingbird who hangs out in the communal area) and a demented yellow throated warbler who has made friends with his own reflection.
We were also treated to a talk from Danny (Country Director for GVI Mexico) about the other expeditions and projects that GVI has around the world. Those of us considering applying for internships are now toying with the idea of going farther afield; your trusted bloggers are rather taken with Condor monitoring in Patagonia, and another popular choice is the Blue Hole in Belize – home to the red-footed booby. It is entirely possible that none ever go home!
On that note we are pleased to report that some of our five-weekers have seen the light and already converted to ten-weekers and we look forward to welcoming Jen back into the Pez Maya fold for the last five weeks of the expedition. Sadly we did have to say goodbye to Beth – she stayed for a week longer than she originally planned, much to our delight, but we had to let her go.
We’ve been here long enough now to start exploring the area. So far we’ve seen the Mayan ruins at Coba and Tulum (both well worth seeing if you ever have the chance). We also randomly bumped into the other marine research expedition group from Mahahual whilst in Tulum; they also got sick of not being able to dive and took matters into their own hands by going on a cenote dive – hope you enjoyed it guys!
We’re off to see what exciting things we can do to fill another no-dive day – until next week manten la fe y serás grande.
Despite this more than half the group managed to get enough dive time to pass their Advanced Open Water courses and the rest should be able to finish at the start of next week. It was interesting to watch people wandering around with buckets on their heads to practice compass navigation, but the general consensus is that diving deeper is considered cooler – not just in terms of temperature.Once we’re all certified we can get out and finally start monitoring the reef...As important as the information that we’ll be collecting is, we’re all having a really hard time thinking of it as work. We received a lecture earlier in the week detailing exactly what we’ll be doing out there and now we’re all itching to get started (or maybe that’s the mozzies).
No diving doesn’t mean no swimming, and we have discovered that there is a very good reason for the rule “Swim only between 07.30 - 18.00”. Some lucky EMs swimming at 17.45 discovered that the sharks start cruising for their dinner around dusk; needless to say, the water was exited very quickly when the fin was spotted.Unfortunately the crocodiles weren’t quite as obliging as the sharks when we went to the lagoon for a croc spot on Thursday evening. The most exciting thing we spotted was Jax slipping in the mud and falling flat on her bum…Sadly there are no pictures of this...
Saturday morning saw a horrific ‘accident’ involving most of the staff. Mike electrocuted himself, the force of which threw him from his ladder into a wall, cracking his skull open; the falling ladder smashed into Rob and crushed one of his legs. Luke slipped in the ‘blood’ (ketchup?) pouring from Mike’s head, fell off the step and landed right next to the rarely-sighted deadly weightbelt snake – what are the odds? No wonder Laura was hysterical – her staff had been decimated in less than a minute! Luckily there were 22 newly trained Emergency First Responders ready to leap into action, although 2 leapt a little too quickly and were attacked by the aforementioned snake, adding to the carnage. We are pleased to report that everyone survived apart from Mike, who will be sadly missed.
On a lighter note our trips into Punta Allen to teach English to the local kids have started. So far 12 of us have headed down to the small fishing village with Lluvia and we’ve all loved it. The last group took a piñata with them which was much appreciated (and demolished) by the children – please note that the chokocrak was removed before the children got to it.
Although most of have now passed our coral, algae, adult and juvenile fish tests there is still a lot to learn. Sam gave a lecture about the various birds that can be found in the Reserve; in addition to our daily bird spots we’re now keeping our eager eyes peeled for anything new. So far we’ve had a couple of ospreys, various vultures, plenty of frigate birds and brown pelicans, Scooty Puff (the tropical mockingbird who hangs out in the communal area) and a demented yellow throated warbler who has made friends with his own reflection.
We were also treated to a talk from Danny (Country Director for GVI Mexico) about the other expeditions and projects that GVI has around the world. Those of us considering applying for internships are now toying with the idea of going farther afield; your trusted bloggers are rather taken with Condor monitoring in Patagonia, and another popular choice is the Blue Hole in Belize – home to the red-footed booby. It is entirely possible that none ever go home!
On that note we are pleased to report that some of our five-weekers have seen the light and already converted to ten-weekers and we look forward to welcoming Jen back into the Pez Maya fold for the last five weeks of the expedition. Sadly we did have to say goodbye to Beth – she stayed for a week longer than she originally planned, much to our delight, but we had to let her go.
We’ve been here long enough now to start exploring the area. So far we’ve seen the Mayan ruins at Coba and Tulum (both well worth seeing if you ever have the chance). We also randomly bumped into the other marine research expedition group from Mahahual whilst in Tulum; they also got sick of not being able to dive and took matters into their own hands by going on a cenote dive – hope you enjoyed it guys!
We’re off to see what exciting things we can do to fill another no-dive day – until next week manten la fe y serás grande.
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