Week 4 in Pez Maya– Study, Love and even more Sharks!

Week 4, where to start? As you know by now, the Pez Mayan weeks start on Saturdays, so why not begin there.

Saturday was a hot, sunny day (just like pretty much all days here), and after our regular two dives the group split in three to celebrate the Saturday night fiesta in different areas of Quintana Roo. One group stayed on base, another spent the night in Tulum and the third made a journey to the world capital of Playa del Carmen. We all had ridiculous amounts of fun, and it didn’t take many seconds after our reunion before everybody started sharing their stories and showing their pictures.

Come Monday we were back in the water, and to our great delight a huge, three-meter nurse shark decided to greet us (picture below)! And we were able to have a good look at it as the water was crystal clear on Monday and Tuesday. And we do mean crystal, you were able to see the corals on the bottom when riding in the boat! And the waves were as calm as if we were swimming on liquid glass. The nurse was not the only amazing sight this week though, one lucky group got to have a swim with a bull shark on Wednesday.

Valentines day is coming up, and here in Pez we’ve got a valentines week extravaganza. We’ve each got our own secret valentine, and everybody has thrown themselves into it with huge displays of love and creative gifts reaching from superhero fruits to wind chimes made out of seashells. The picture below was the second gift to… well, guess who? Anyway, everybody is looking forward to their big gift on Saturday as well as finding out who their secret admirer is.

Also, this week saw the beginning of people starting their BTEC work. Everyone involved has given it their all and all have passed their presentation. Now we are working on a targeted species list that should prove to be thrilling. To continue on the subject of hard work and good news, this weeks awesome weather has led to virtually everyone achieving their advanced open water certificates. Now we are spotting and doing coral watch, and very soon we will be ready to monitor!

On Tuesday we all got to meet our new staff member, Ed! From Birmingham in England, he is an instructor and boat driver (well, nearly, he is on training) and is a welcome addition to our team.

We suffered a huge loss on Wednesday with the death of our old compressor. We’re not completely sure on the details as the autopsy is not yet finished, but hopefully when the compressor man comes, life will come back to the old girl.

Thursday was perhaps the most "dramatic" day as during a lecture on lionfish, we heard some terrifying screams and the sound of a car honking. We all dashed to the front of base to find complete chaos! The truck had been crashed against a tree with Ed caught between bonnet and the tree. The remaining staff lay injured, bleeding and screaming all over the scene. The volunteers instantly jumped straight into action, performing CPR, first aid and shock management to keep the staff alive until the ambulance came. Once the entire situation was under control, the staff miraculously recovered and revealed, to our big surprise, that it was all a set up to test our EFR skills. With a few flaws in our methods and timing, the staff were happy with our performance.

Both Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we went to Punta Allen to help teach some of the local children English. Sweet, keen to learn and very energetic, but after an hour of learning we turned to games for the rest of our time there.

It seems impossible that we’re already at the start of week five, which obviously is the last week for Tegan and Niki. It is going to be extremely sad to say goodbye to them, but hopefully we will have an amazing last week with them. More about that next time…

Peace and love, Crouz & Maja

Week 4 in Pez Maya– Study, Love and even more Sharks!