Every day is a good day at Punta Gruesa...

Every day is a good day at Punta Gruesa. How could it not be? However, there comes a time when some days are especially wonderful. Tuesday, May 18 just happened to be one of those days. After a few days of preparation for community work, we were able to execute our plan in the local primary school in Mahahual. Teaching upwards of 100 students different aspects of recycling is no easy task. We quickly came to find that a lot of the kids have the attention span of a fish unless we kept them engaged and excited. Kids will be kids, right?

It was time to make wallets out of used juice and milk containers (AKA Tetra Paks) after a brief outline of the life cycle of a piece of paper and explaining the importance of reusing our waste products. This is when the controlled chaos ensued. "Where is the sticky stuff?!", "I need scissors!", "Please staple this!" were the shouts heard all over the classroom. After a good quarter hour of this, each student had themselves a new wallet made from used goods of which they were eager to fill right away with all the pesos in their pockets.

The morning with the school kids was an easy way to tire out us volunteers. Alas, we still had an afternoon Coral Watch dive in the schedule. After the weary ride home, we kitted up and were in the water in no time. Three of us divers were suddenly sprung back to full energy when a massive Loggerhead Turtle thought we were worthy of inspecting. A Green Turtle on a northerly route then swam steadily past us a little while later. We turned around to see a Southern Stingray trying to locate the best spot in which to bury itself on the sea floor. To top it all off, we saw the butt end of a rather large Nurse Shark hanging out under an overhang on the reef wall. Needless to say, we were all smiles and yelps of joy upon surfacing.

It was a long day, but oh so fun and very deserving of a nice warm Pacifico.

Every day is a good day at Punta Gruesa...