1st week in Pez Maya: bucket showers, new diet, new friends with 4 & 6 legs!

Hello Avid Readers,

The first two week at Pez Maya have flown by. But with the heat and humidity comes lots and lots of rain. Fortunately, it has not slowed down our fun! The first week was full of things to learn and people to get to know. Good thing the group was packed with characters as we picked up on from the first question of “If your house was on fire what would you save?” After that we moved into our huts and met who we were to live with for the next 5 or 10 weeks. Over the next few days, we had some new experiences for example, studying in the summer, taking bucket showers, living with a vast variety of creatures and for some of us, eating an entirely vegetarian diet.

The studying varied between the group, some of us (cooler portion) were studying Caribbean corals and the other less cool half were studying the Caribbean fish (no rivalry, honest!). When we felt like we had our specialty down, it was time to take a test….or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6. Since we spent all that time studying we worked up quite a sweat, so bucket shower time it is, this involved getting a bucket of water from the well and maybe a cup and dousing yourself with as much water as you can carry, but watch out, only 4 buckets per week…unless it rains, then you got a free shower.

But while you`re showering you have to keep an eye out for some friends, including scorpions, mosquitoes, iguanas, geckos, snakes, ants, crabs, eagles, vultures, washed up jellyfish, bats and turtles. Yes we feel like quite the jungle animal whisperers out here. Speaking of turtles, on day 8 we had a special surprise of a nest of loggerhead turtles hatch and we were all speechless as we lead them into the big blue for the first time in their life.

1st week in Pez Maya: bucket showers, new diet, new friends with 4 & 6 legs!