Tasty Treats from Pez Maya!

It´s “Tasty Treat” week here in Pez Maya while we enjoy the arrival of a whole load of delectable goodies. The tuck box has been replenished with cookies, chocolate and crisps (which will probably not last the week) and our much-anticipated Friday night feast had a most welcome addition. Captain Jim managed to snag 7 large lionfish all in one day, which he brought back to base, 5 of them hanging off the same spear. Maura eagerly whipped out the Lionfish cookbook (an entire book devoted to ways to serve Lionfish!) and spent the afternoon in the kitchen. Come dinnertime, we were treated to beer-battered Lionfish, and there was even enough for seconds :) Needless to say, we are all hoping Captain Jim or the other Lionfish hunters here might bring back a similar catch tomorrow…

In other fish-related news, the volunteers are steadily progressing with monitoring and dive training. Michelle, Jonas, Malin and Jemima are all practice monitoring coral and benthic data, while Mat, Fergus and Marty are nearing the real thing with their fish identification and sizing. Emma, Stephan and Sisse have graduated from Jim´s school of perfect diving buoyancy training and have survived diving 25m down into the Mexican reefs.

Four volunteers have also taken on the challenge of becoming Rescue divers, having been given superhero and villain identities. Black Beauty (Queen of the Nile), Houdini, the Frog and the Dick are under the tutelage of Goat Boy and the Slash for the next week and a half. Spending their free time learning life-saving techniques for panicking divers and their dives towing each other to safety, they will soon have to undergo the test. Nicknamed the ´hell dive´, Goat Boy and the Slash (otherwise known as Ben and Rhu) will put them through their paces by simulating a dive where everything which could go wrong will…

On dry land Dov, Valeria and Fergus spent Wednesday in Punta Allen continuing GVI´s English teaching in the school and the library. This week the excited schoolchildren had

to learn the words for clothes and body parts, aided by a sketch of a teenage boy, a work

of art completed with great care the night before. Valeria meanwhile was busy with the

ladies of Punta Allen, enjoying the sun, sitting outside going through question and answer

words. Valeria and Maura also took three volunteers to Playa del Carmen last week, to take part in the recycling fair there. They put on workshops for the duration of the day, making handbags out of used and unwanted tetra packs (now much in demand) and wallets out of old cookie wrappers(…of which there are now many more on base…). They were accompanied for most of the day by school children from Playa del Carmen, and had a good turnout of people, great news for GVI. They returned back to base with yet more tasty treats…which were put to good use in the kitchen to make a trifle to celebrate Valeria´s

birthday!

Tasty Treats from Pez Maya!