Incidental Sightings and sick fun

This week has been a rather busy one with perfect weather for diving every day, this has meant that

with our earlier starts of 6:00am we have been able to get all 4 waves out every day!!! All this diving has meant that our open water newbies have all managed to pass their course! So congratulations go to Julia, Jennifer and Maj-britt who are now all joining us on our spot dives.

Despite the good weather there has been an unfortunate wave of illness through some of the volunteers although it has not spread to everyone, leaving the lucky ones with more dives!

The incidental sightings this week have been rather amazing, with a large pod of dolphins off the coast, a

lot of our divers were able to swim and play with the dolphins after the dive for nearly half an hour!! The

dolphins were all probably wondering what these slow and clumsy things were on the surface as they

darted around us, making us look rather ungainly in comparison! Also in the incidental sightings this

week we have recorded hawksbill and loggerhead turtles as well as moray eels, stingrays, eagle rays and

some very hard to spot scorpion-fish!

The colder weather has begun to set in and we are all shivering in the 20oc morning temperatures, I think people from colder climates have well and truly adjusted to the 30 oc average temperatures here and are beginning to pile on more and more layers as the mornings get just that little bit chillier.

The project coordinator Cynthia came to base on Thursday to discuss with the interns their destinations for the final three months of their training. We were shown lots of photos and information on all the areas and dive shops and many of the interns made their final choices on where they would like to go. Hopefully we will all get our first or second choice but wherever we go I am sure it will be amazing.

Talking of future destinations, Marti our scholar is leaving us at the end of this week, although we will miss our Australian `Mowgli` we will not be without a scholar as one of our current volunteers will be taking over as a new scholar. I`m sure Robbie will make a very good scholar as he seems to be one of those people that you just can´t not like. The volunteers all wish him the best of luck.

The trip to the school in Punta Allen was a blast. Despite a shaky start on the rocky roads taking us into town, we were soon all settled into class. Mae and Karl enlightened the children in the upper years with some fun drawing exercises, whilst Sam and Julia sang songs for learning English with the lower years.

The extra-curricular classes outside of the school hours are really enticing the local community and it is

so exciting for everyone involved to see the changes that this program has implemented in Punta Allen.

Incidental Sightings and sick fun