Lights, camera, action!!

Hola delfines locos!!!

Welcome to another exciting edition of “The Real World Pez Maya”. This week it has been our privilege to play host to three visitors from the GVI office in Playa del Carmen. Cynthia came to experience life on base and tell us all about GVI’s work in Mexico; Olly came back and we discovered that he has the power to change the weather. Last time it was windy and he brought with him calm seas; this time we had perfect diving conditions, and he brought along the wind, resulting in this week’s only cancelled dive. Cheers Olly!! Our final guest was none other than Head Honcho Danny, who arrived with a Spanish film crew in tow. We are still not sure what that was all about, but the highlight of the day was undoubtedly when they stripped down to their (overly tight) undies to play volleyball. A little disturbing, to say the least…..

On the sub-aqua side of things, we’ve had a very productive week. Monitoring practice continues-with varying degrees of success; the fish people are continually intrigued as to why the coral folk “wave at everything you come across underwater”. We are in fact “wafting”, and it is a scientifically proven and universally accepted coral identification technique. How else are we expected to tell the difference between a Zooanthid and Montastrea cavernosa? Or an Encrusting Gorgonian and Macro Algae? It takes a huge amount of practice and a great deal of skill. Promise.

To rival last week’s Nurse Shark sighting, another dive group has had an encounter with two rather friendly dolphins. “Lucky Louis” as he has now been named, managed to be present on both occasions. He may not be lucky much longer though, as many EMs are feeling murderously jealous. As we dived through last weekend, by Thursday we all needed twenty four hours off gas to de-saturate. (Get us-don’t we sound like scuba experts?) To keep us out of trouble, Vidal, our on base wildlife guru and warden (and former crocodile and turtle hunter, now converted from the dark side) took some of us through the mangroves and the lagoon. We were able to swim “with” the manatees (meaning that we swam in the water that we had seen manatees in earlier), and we spotted a couple of crocs. Pretty cool if you ask us…..

To top the week off we had Katie’s birthday party on Saturday, with a “K” fancy dress theme. There was a killer, kidnapper, Kama Sutra (probably best not to ask), knotty, kinky, a kid, and Mark came as our very own Kelsey. There was a King of the Jungle, but it was so rubbish it is hardly worth mentioning, and a large contingent of killjoys attended, who couldn’t be bothered to make an effort with a costume at all. There were also special guest appearances from Keira Knightly (in her Pirates of the Caribbean get up), Kanye West, and Kelly Brook.

We forgot to mention last week that huts two and four won the Michelin star cookery competition for the first five weeks, and they were rewarded with chocolate. As you can imagine, it was gratefully received. We’ve already had two stars awarded for the second five weeks, one each for huts two and three. The competition continues…..stay tuned!

That pretty much covers it for this week; coming up in week seven we have an exchange trip with the GVI Marine Research expedition in Mahahual which Sarah, Jax and Mark are very excited about. Staff member Lluvia will be going too, and may be staying a little longer to act as science guru. Make sure you give her back Mahahual!!!!! If we’re lucky, week seven could also be the first week since the beginning of the phase when all the EMs will be diving; Jos’s shoulder has pretty much healed, Iain’s broken nose is slightly less broken, and Abraham’s ear infection should be cleared up before the week’s end.

We’ll let you know how it all turns out-until next time- Manten la fe y séras grande!

Lights, camera, action!!