This week, all of the expedition members were happy to discover that the weather had cooled to livable, breathable, sleepable levels over the weekend while we were away at the turtle festival. I actually got to wear my sweatshirt for the first time that Sunday evening. Being able to sleep quite well for at least 2 nights in a row certainly did wonders for my health and mood. Sadly the increased wind which was helping to cool us all down also made it impossible to dive for three full days. This was quite unfortunate for my divemaster progress, but I am still assured by staff that I will be able to complete it within the 10 week period. Strangely enough, even though I was not able to dive for those three days, I was still in a much better mood than I had been all weekend. I think it largely has to do with having the right perspective, and consciously choosing my current situation, over and over again. I chose to be here 3 weeks ago, and now, this morning, as I wake up, I am still choosing it. I´ll choose to be here at dinner tonight, and when I wake up tomorrow. If I choose not to be here, I´ll leave. But til then, I just need to keep realizing that this is my choice, and make the most of my amazing time here. No more grumpy moods!
So, while we couldn´t dive, we managed to put up a volleyball net. We were inspired so much by beach volleyball that we just had to pick Top Gun as our weekly Sunday night movie this week. Also, I passed my coral exam! Took me about 5 tries, which I gather is just about average (some of those pictures are very very tricky!!). We also became certified in Emergency First Response (basically CPR and First Aid training). Lastly, we also had a special tutorial that qualified us to be certified O2 (Oxygen) Providers (often administered when divers show signs of decompression illness, after CPR, or for victims who have gone into shock, to name a few).
We finally got to dive again on Thursday, thought the waves were still quite choppy, and the visibility was absolutely terrible. Three meters away, you´d pretty muchg loose sight of your buddy. Coral spots were difficult, and to top it all off, I had some lingering effects from my cold that gave me some pain when descending, right across the top of my head in my sinuses. That made diving very frustrating, but each dive gets better as my cold disappears completely. Friday was much better for visibility and reminded me once again how amazing diving can be. We were at a site called Oasis which has a fairly steep dropoff, and I was given a bit of free time while the dive leader concentrated on spots for a different pair of divers. Just hanging there, suspended at the edge of a reef dropoff, perfectly neutrally buoyant...is an experience that just defies description. I floated, and somersaulted, and twisted in place. I saw fish darting in and out of coral, and then a large school swims right around me, and continues on as if I weren´t even there. I cannot adequately describe how truly magical it is.
Saturday we are allowed a fun dive, where we leave our dive leaders back on base, and dive on our own (but always in pairs!). It was fun to be able to choose our own sites, and swim where we wanted to go. My buddy and I didn´t see much in the way of rays or sharks or eels, which we were hoping for, but we did see some pretty massive schools of fish, including some gray angelfish that are apparently rarely seen in large groups. I wish I had pictures to show you, but most of the dives I´ve been on have been deeper than 10 meters and thus, I can´t bring my camera along. I also still don´t have any other pictures for you because I still haven´t managed to charge it. (I promise, I´ll have something for you next week!)
That´s about it so far! This coming week, we should be beginning our Rescue Diving course, as well as learning about survey techniques, so that hopefully sometime the week after, we´ll begin doing actual coral surveys. The standards for identification and techniques are quite high so that the data we retrieve can never be in question, thus it takes quite a while before we are all deemed ready to collect that data on our surveys. The project we´re involved in provides two sets of data: one from our sites, which are protected areas, as well as data from Mahahual, an area south of the Sian Kaán Biosphere, that is unprotected. This way, we can present data that hopefully shows the positive effects of protecting areas to the Mexican government, as well as try to get through to them what all of their highly destructive cruise ship and spring break tourism is doing to the coral reefs.
That´s all for this week! Stay tuned for my update on Week 4 (dear god, has it been 4 weeks already??) next week!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Week 2 in Mexico! (sorry it´s a bit late!)
My apologies for not writing a blog last weekend. I was run down from lack of sleep (due to heat and humidity, not choice, I promise you!) and came down with a cold, which kept me from almost all activities for the whole weekend. Granted, this gave me more time to write, but I was in a fairly foul mood for being left out of so many things, that I realized I needed to step back from the blog, lest I write something I might regret later.
Happily I am well again aside from a tiny lingering cough, so I can return to once again regale you with tales from Pez Maya, Mexico. I hope you are enjoying the blog...please let me know if there is anything in particular you would like to hear more about!
My second week here in Mexico had me focusing primarily on completing my Advanced Open Water training. This requires 5 special dives beyond my Open Water training from last week. The first was a Boat Dive, which was truly no different than my previous dives. They simply make it a category of dive, since you could have been diving from docks or from the beach. The second was a Naturalist Dive that involved searching out and recording different species of fish and coral and algae and correctly identifying them later on--a bit of a precurser to my work later on during this expedition. My third dive was called Peak Performance Buoyancy. It required us to swim through smallish hoops without touching the side (right side up and up side down--much harder than you think, due to the tank on your back). We also had to race our fellow divers underwater, keeping a small floating ball under a spoon as we kicked along. Lastly for that dive, we took our fins off underwater, just to see what it was like. Suffice it to say, we got nowhere fast. The fourth dive was a Navigation Dive, where we learned how to follow bearings under water with a compass, as well as how to judge distances by counting steady fin kicks. The last dive however, was by far the best: the Deep Dive. This is the dive that certifies us to be able to dive down to 100 feet, or 30 meters. We went to a particularly deep site called ¨Special K¨ (don´t ask me why, even the staff doesn´t know). As we descended, I swear it felt like another world. You loose the ability to see the color red, the deeper you go, then orange, then yellow and so forth. At our depth, it was mostly just red and some orange that were totally off. Our instructor pulled out a tomato, and I swear the outside was purple and the inside was green. I´ve been told blood also looks like a very dark green that far underwater, but I promise, that´s not from personal experience! We only had a total of 16 minutes for this dive (as opposed to our normal 40 minutes), otherwise we would run the risk of having to perform a number of safety stops in order to ensure no chance of getting decompression sickness, otherwise known as the bends.
After this dive, I was officially Advanced Open Water certified, and would begin my coral spotting dives. These dives are designed to familiarize us with the way the coral actually looks under water, because many of the pictures in our books don´t do them justice. It´s often very difficult bordering on impossible to tell them apart from photos, so the spot dives become absolutely invaluable in learning to differenciate them, and eventually for passing our coral exams.
At the end of the week, starting on Friday, we had a Turtle Festival in the nearby town of Tulum which I mentioned in my last blog. Adults and children gathered in Tulum to celebrate the end of turtle hatching season. GVI provided a host of childrens´games designed to educate them on the local species of turtles as well as how to protect the them from beach pollution. Did you know that turtles lay between 60 and 120 eggs at a time? And that they´ve been around for over 120 million years? And that they can live over 100 years old? And that of the 4 species of marine turtles that live in the area, only 1 is an herbivore? (the Green Turtle! big surprise) And that of the 7 species of marine turtle in the world, that Mexico as a whole has 6 that visit her shores? Anyway...the games went over very well, and my Spanish got quite the kickstart as well. Trying to communicate was often frustrating and slow, but the children were patient, and by the end of the night, I was forgetting myself, and asking our base manager what we were going to eat for dinner in Spanish instead of English.
That about brings me to my falling ill and fairly foul mood. Most everyone in my expedition went out on Friday and Saturday nights, and I stayed in, hoping that some extra sleep would speed my recovery from my cold. Hopefully I´ll get to make up for it this weekend! I´ll try to finish up my second blog tomorrow, so you all can get fully caught up on the goings on here in Mexico. Another apology--my camera has been dead all week, so I haven´t been able to take, nor load any pictures. I´ll do my best to charge it for tomorrow though!
Hasta luego mis amigos! Check back tomorrow for (cross your fingers) another update!
Happily I am well again aside from a tiny lingering cough, so I can return to once again regale you with tales from Pez Maya, Mexico. I hope you are enjoying the blog...please let me know if there is anything in particular you would like to hear more about!
My second week here in Mexico had me focusing primarily on completing my Advanced Open Water training. This requires 5 special dives beyond my Open Water training from last week. The first was a Boat Dive, which was truly no different than my previous dives. They simply make it a category of dive, since you could have been diving from docks or from the beach. The second was a Naturalist Dive that involved searching out and recording different species of fish and coral and algae and correctly identifying them later on--a bit of a precurser to my work later on during this expedition. My third dive was called Peak Performance Buoyancy. It required us to swim through smallish hoops without touching the side (right side up and up side down--much harder than you think, due to the tank on your back). We also had to race our fellow divers underwater, keeping a small floating ball under a spoon as we kicked along. Lastly for that dive, we took our fins off underwater, just to see what it was like. Suffice it to say, we got nowhere fast. The fourth dive was a Navigation Dive, where we learned how to follow bearings under water with a compass, as well as how to judge distances by counting steady fin kicks. The last dive however, was by far the best: the Deep Dive. This is the dive that certifies us to be able to dive down to 100 feet, or 30 meters. We went to a particularly deep site called ¨Special K¨ (don´t ask me why, even the staff doesn´t know). As we descended, I swear it felt like another world. You loose the ability to see the color red, the deeper you go, then orange, then yellow and so forth. At our depth, it was mostly just red and some orange that were totally off. Our instructor pulled out a tomato, and I swear the outside was purple and the inside was green. I´ve been told blood also looks like a very dark green that far underwater, but I promise, that´s not from personal experience! We only had a total of 16 minutes for this dive (as opposed to our normal 40 minutes), otherwise we would run the risk of having to perform a number of safety stops in order to ensure no chance of getting decompression sickness, otherwise known as the bends.
After this dive, I was officially Advanced Open Water certified, and would begin my coral spotting dives. These dives are designed to familiarize us with the way the coral actually looks under water, because many of the pictures in our books don´t do them justice. It´s often very difficult bordering on impossible to tell them apart from photos, so the spot dives become absolutely invaluable in learning to differenciate them, and eventually for passing our coral exams.
At the end of the week, starting on Friday, we had a Turtle Festival in the nearby town of Tulum which I mentioned in my last blog. Adults and children gathered in Tulum to celebrate the end of turtle hatching season. GVI provided a host of childrens´games designed to educate them on the local species of turtles as well as how to protect the them from beach pollution. Did you know that turtles lay between 60 and 120 eggs at a time? And that they´ve been around for over 120 million years? And that they can live over 100 years old? And that of the 4 species of marine turtles that live in the area, only 1 is an herbivore? (the Green Turtle! big surprise) And that of the 7 species of marine turtle in the world, that Mexico as a whole has 6 that visit her shores? Anyway...the games went over very well, and my Spanish got quite the kickstart as well. Trying to communicate was often frustrating and slow, but the children were patient, and by the end of the night, I was forgetting myself, and asking our base manager what we were going to eat for dinner in Spanish instead of English.
That about brings me to my falling ill and fairly foul mood. Most everyone in my expedition went out on Friday and Saturday nights, and I stayed in, hoping that some extra sleep would speed my recovery from my cold. Hopefully I´ll get to make up for it this weekend! I´ll try to finish up my second blog tomorrow, so you all can get fully caught up on the goings on here in Mexico. Another apology--my camera has been dead all week, so I haven´t been able to take, nor load any pictures. I´ll do my best to charge it for tomorrow though!
Hasta luego mis amigos! Check back tomorrow for (cross your fingers) another update!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Welcome to Pez Maya!
It´s amazing what a clear easterly ocean view can do to make one a morning person. For the past week I have been waking up at 5:30am and being ready to work by 6am. When I leave my ¨house¨I can still see the moon and the stars, but as the minutes pass, the sky begins to brighten and I witness the day being born across the sea. There is something empowering and sublime about it. For me, a sunrise is definitely better than any cup of coffee.
I´ll tell you about my first week in a moment but first a bit about my hosts, GVI. Global Vision International has the following little blurb on their website which is a good little summation of their company: ¨Global Vision International (GVI) runs responsible volunteering programs in over 40 countries around the world. We offer volunteers the chance for a hands-on experience by personally contributing to important conservation initiatives and community projects. Volunteer programs run from one week to 2 years.¨ You can read up more about them here: http://www.gviusa.com/. I did a decent amout of research on these kinds of volunteer travel companies, and GVI seemed the most organized and well run of the bunch, and so far my experiences with them have only supported my research.
A typical day with them starts, as I mentioned, at 5:30 with a ritual daily application of sunscreen and bug repellant. At 6am, we begin our duties, which include things like making breakfast, raking the sand to keep sandflies down, readying the boat supplies, sweeping the common areas and cleaning the bathrooms. At 6:30 we eat breakfast, which is usually oatmeal, or cereal, or pancakes. Then we often have a lecture about reef ecology, or about the reservation we live on, the Sian Ka´an Biosphere, or about the local coral or fish species. After that, we gather BCDs, regulators and air tanks for the first dive of the day. While we are learning how to dive, we´re only generally doing one dive a day, but once we´re all certified to do reef research we´ll be doing two 40 minute dives every day. Lunch is generally lentils or beans and rice, or pasta and vegetables. We never have meat because the base doesn´t have electricity except for a few hours at night, so refridgeration becomes impossible. More dives go out in the afternoon, and then we put away the equipment, push the boats back onto the beach, and eat dinner--once again, a meal of vegetables with beans, rice, pasta, lentils, or potatoes. After dinner we have a briefing covering the schedule of the following day, and any comments that staff or volunteers wish to make about the days activities. In between dives, there is always a bit of free time so we can read our diving manuals, study our coral and fish species, or just relax in a hammock. Sometimes, we can even, GASP! take a bucket shower, and remove the layers of sunscreen, repellant, and salt from our bodies (only to layer it on again nearly immediately of course).
You now know what a typical day for me is like down here. That said, schedules can change from week to week, and we often have special events to take part in. Next week, Tulum hosts the annual celebration of the end of the turtle hatching season with the Turtle Festival. There are games for kids and special baby turtle releases, as well as artistic performances and vendors from all over selling environmentally minded wares. GVI will be participating by creating some of those games for the children, as well as helping with crowd control during the turtle release. Hopefully I´ll have a lovely update for you all on that next week!
Til then, I´ll leave you with two pictures of some baby turtles on our own beach here at our base, Pez Maya. Enjoy!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
I am here!
I broke one of my cardinal travel rules yesterday. I packed more than I could comfortably carry by myself. That rule used to be shorter...it used to say, "Never pack more than you can carry" but I since learned yesterday that the human body can be pushed to some very uncomfortable limits, and I'd rather not go through that again any time soon....1 heavy tall backpack, 2 heavy smaller backpacks and a shoulderbag don't mix, especially in the sodden midafternoon heat, down four long blocks filled with mexican men offering me "alternative" places to stay the night..... ah well, lesson learned.
I'm here!! A crazy rainstorm visited later in the afternoon...I swear it must have poured about 2 inches of rain in a single hour. I wisely found some dinner during the storm and happily watched while the skies opened up on all the silly tourists who were still walking around. A beautiful cool breeze, the sound of the splashing rain, a table to myself, a beer, a dish called Pollo Mayan which included fried plantains (!! yum !!), and the incredibly amazing sound of lightning cracking less than a mile away. It wasn't the worst way to spend the evening, certainly. Though I imagine the solitude would get to me after a while.
I shall be meeting my fellow expedition members tomorrow morning at 10am at the Hotel Colorado. From there, we'll be heading off to the base in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere, so I don't imagine I'll have another chance to update until the weekend after next, most likely. So for now...bienvenidos, y hasta luego!
I'm here!! A crazy rainstorm visited later in the afternoon...I swear it must have poured about 2 inches of rain in a single hour. I wisely found some dinner during the storm and happily watched while the skies opened up on all the silly tourists who were still walking around. A beautiful cool breeze, the sound of the splashing rain, a table to myself, a beer, a dish called Pollo Mayan which included fried plantains (!! yum !!), and the incredibly amazing sound of lightning cracking less than a mile away. It wasn't the worst way to spend the evening, certainly. Though I imagine the solitude would get to me after a while.
I shall be meeting my fellow expedition members tomorrow morning at 10am at the Hotel Colorado. From there, we'll be heading off to the base in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere, so I don't imagine I'll have another chance to update until the weekend after next, most likely. So for now...bienvenidos, y hasta luego!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)