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Friday, October 8, 2010

First week's enjoyment in Pez Maya! Arrival, dive courses, lectures and first duties

We all arrived at Pez Maya, home for the next five or ten weeks, on Friday 1st October. Spirits were high as we sat down to a hearty lunch. After
eating, we had a base tour and were shown our huts and where the day’s activities take place. Staff Jack and Jill (ha!) then helped us with our mozzie nets and we all had a chance to settle in and meet new friends.

The staff prepared a delightful dinner of lentil burger s and wedges. Yum! Everyone introduced themselves at briefing and declared which sea creature they would prefer to be – everything from nudibranchs to Blue Whales! After a long days travelling, working and preparing food almost everyone went to bed relatively early.

On Saturday morning we had a bit of a lie in (by Pez Maya standards anyway) and woke up at 7am! After a hearty breakfast, we had a couple of lectures, a first swim in the Caribbean and continued our base orientation.

All us non-divers started learning our Open water theory, and on Sunday we took our first breaths underwater!. Some of the more keen volunteers tried fish and coral tests whilst the rest of us sat down to tutorials.

During the week we had lots of lectures, where we learned about the Goals of Pez Maya, Health and Hygiene, Coral Reefs and Sea Turtles. We also started learning our duties, splitting into hut groups to learn kitchen, communal, grounds and boat. We did some diving too; fish and coral spots for those already qualified, and lots of dive training for the newbies, who managed to finish their Confined Open Water in super quick time and are looking forward to venturing out into the blue! Everyone is looking forward to the weekend where there is talk of trips into town to buy all kinds of random stuff like harem pants and face paint, potentially a toga party on Saturday night (someone mentioned something about coconut thongs…watch this space!) and having time to relax on the Caribbean beach after a long week! Yay!

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