Week 3 at Pez Maya - Turtle festival, beach cleans and Open water completed

Week three has been a busy week at Pez Maya! We left base on Friday afternoon after diving in the morning and arrived in Tulum ready for Turtle festival. Turtlefest has been running for seven years now and is a celebration of the end of the turtle nesting season. The aim is to promote environmental awareness and educate the public in all things turtle-related. On the Friday we had lots of games and activities for people to join in with. We had colouring in, quizzes, face-painting, games and Trashy Turtle showed the kids how to recycle their rubbish!

On the Saturday we went to Pescadores to do a beach clean and take part in a sand sculpture competition. One of our teams even won second prize for a sculpture showing how people can help to try and protect baby turtles by helping them to find their way safely to the sea. In the afternoon we made our way to Xcacel to help out at the performance that evening. There were some beautiful costumes and lots of dancing to tell the story of how the four elements, earth, wind, fire and water, help to ensure the turtles safety in the face of dangers such as poachers, dogs and seabirds. It was an impressive performance including an appearance by a HUGE brightly coloured illuminated turtle sculpture who laid some eggs and it very fittingly culminated in the release of some baby turtles.

After that most of the group spent their day off in Tulum but a few volunteers went on to Akumal to help out on the final day of Turtlefest. All went well. They saw lots of turtles (quite big ones too and very close up), ate some tasty food and Jo was even lucky enough to see a spotted eagle ray!

After a successful weekend the week did not start off terribly well back on base as strong wind and waves prevented us from diving on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. Rubbish! On the plus side it did keep the mosquitoes at bay for a while. We didn’t get much of a chance to relax though as we got straight into our Emergency First Response training. A few people went to see the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve Visitor Centre to learn more about the reserve in which the base is situated. We had our introduction to TEFL lecture so those who are interested will start to plan lessons soon for the kids in Punta Allen, a local fishing village, and for the staff on the army base too. On top of all that the people who run Cave Heaven came one evening to tell us about the amazing underground rivers and cave systems in the area. The plan is to do a cenote dive sometime in the next couple of weeks so we’re all pretty excited about that.

As far as animal sightings go this week has been reasonably quiet because we only went diving on Friday morning and Thursday due to Turtlefest and the poor weather. We did manage to spot a 1.5m boa constrictor right beside our huts though and Nelson saw a crocodile from the bridge overlooking the lagoon.

And finally, congratulations to Vicky for passing her PADI open water. That is now the whole group open water qualified. Hooray!

Week 3 at Pez Maya - Turtle festival, beach cleans and Open water completed