Week 8....Happy Thanksgiving!

I can´t believe I went scuba diving on Thanksgiving. Talk about a surreal experience. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, warmer even, than it has been recently. The sun was shining, the breeze was perfect, the water was turquoise, and I had my very first successful monitor dive! It took me eight weeks, but I´ve finally contributed to the body of scientific data that we´ve been gathering here in Sian Ka´an!

How a monitor dive works: I´m a Point Intercept monitor, which means that at a particular given monitor site, I will decend with a weighted measuring tape, and lay a straight line of 30 meters down on the reef. My buddy behind me is a Coral Communities monitor. He swims behind me, making sure that the tape lays flat on the reef. We both swim back to the beginning of the line, and then I record on a slate the start time and depth, as well as the compass bearing of the line. Then I begin recording what lays beneath the tape every 25 cm. That´s a total of 120 items along 30 meters. Behind me, my buddy records on his slate every coral beneath the line that is 10 cm or larger, and it what condition (ie, diseased, bleached, healthy) it is in, plus a lot of other data like the dimentions and color and such. We can only be one arms length apart, so we need to work without bashing each other with our fins and such. We´re upside down for most of the time! Once we get to the end of the 30 meters, we record the end time and depth of the line, and reel the tape back up. By then, it´s just about 40 minutes, which is the limit of our dive, and we slowly head back to the surface, with a 3 minute decompression stop at 5 meters, just for safety´s sake.

Just after that dive completed however, I took the fastest bucket shower possible, and raced to the kitchen. Why? Because the Americans were cooking Thanksgiving dinner, that´s why! The British didn´t really understand what the fuss was all about, but they were certainly okay with allowing us to take over the kitchen (no one really loves kitchen duty). So we planned a menu, and slaved in the kitchen all day between dives, and VOILA! A magnificent feast was prepared! With 25 people on base, it was left to four of the Americans to prepare the meal....we had a fantastic spinach and cheddar dip for an appetizer. Then, there was a salad with gorgonzola cheese and avocados with a sesame ginger dressing. Mexico doesn´t have too many turkeys so we had to subsitute with roast chickens. I made the stuffing! Thanks Mom for the amazing recipe! People positively salivated when hearing there was bacon in it! We also had sweet potato mash with marshmallows and a green bean casserole. Finally, we had an apple-pear pie, and a pumpkin pie made from roasting an actual pumpkin...no canned pumpkin for us! The rest of the EMs were blown away by the effort we put in, (and we were also a bit amazed at how well it turned out!) and were very very Thankful! We arranged the tables into one very long table, and I asked that we go around the table and say one or two things for which each of us are thankful. Most mentioned the food, but also the amazing friends and experiences we´ve had, due to this expedition. We definitely all felt fairly blessed.

That was the end of the week, but the beginning definitely didn´t start off that well. For one, I was stung by either a bee or a scorpion on Monday. Yep. Monday was rather like one of those terrible horrible no good very bad days, except that I was in Mexico, so how can you really complain? I nearly got hit by the boat twice when getting in and out of it, I was absolutely exhausted from still having a bit of lingering illness, and on top of it all, when I came back to dive, I headed straight to the kitchen to help with dinner. I grabbed my tshirt, which was laying on the vegetable bin cabinet, and in the process of putting it on, got stung right over my heart by....something. I yelped, and struggled to untangle myself from the shirt, while trying not to rip my bathing suit top off as well. It HURT! Imagine a large booster shot-sized needle jabbing into your chest and being swished around a bit...that´s a little like what it felt like to me. Then it started to burn in growing ring around the sting, which eventually spread into the shoulder joint, making it difficult to lift my left arm without a fair bit of soreness. But we never saw what stung me! No one saw anything fly away, but they searched my shirt and didn´t find a scorpion either. It was a single sting, so it wasn´t a spider, but considering how much it hurt, and what the spot where I was stung looked like, (one of the staff is familiar with scorpion stings, and agrees with me) I´m considering it a scorpion sting (plus, it´s much cooler to say I got stung by a scorpion than a stupid little bee). I immediately informed the staff, who provided me with some cream for immediate pain relief, as well as hydrocortisone to help with the reaction. I also took a antihystamine pill to counteract anything that might affect me internally, and stayed in the company of others for at least an hour afterwards, to make sure it wasn´t the poisonous kind of scorpion. Success! No poison for me, just a world of pain for a short time. The real pain subsided within 20 minutes. After that, it was just really really sore, and after 3 hours, it was nearly gone, aside from a bit of stiffness in my shoulder. A lovely way to start the week!

Tuesday was windy, and they cancelled the diving after one rather unsuccessful morning dive. Wednesday brought a few mini monsoons, though we did our best to dive around them. This is why the amazing weather of Thursday was so magnificent! A very crappy week finally turned amazing, just in time for the most delicious holiday of the year.

Friday was super windy again, but they let one set of dives go out in the morning just to see how the conditions were. Visibility was about 2 to 3 meters...we were essentially diving in an underwater sandstorm. But the other divemaster candidates and I needed to rack up our dives, so they let a few of us have a second dive, and cancelled the rest, starting the weekend early. We don´t get an extra long weekend like all of you do, though. After half of Friday and all of Saturday off, we go back to work on Sunday! Hopefully I´ll finally get my Rescue Diver certification finished tomorrow, and then it´s on to Divemaster training! By the way, have I mentioned how much I´m in way over my head with this?? There are timed swims, with fins and without, along with timed tired diver tows, and physics and physiology tests, and a bunch more! Eek! But it´ll be fine. I hope.

See you all next week!

PICTURES!!

These our our boats! Vision, and Ka´ay. They´re fussy sometimes, but they´re all we got.

Mexico´s flag....and Pez Maya´s flag.

We enjoy playing the occasional game of volleyball. I´m on the winning team, (of course) on the left, but you can´t really see me because Liz is in the way.

We´ve been blessed with two beautiful full moons so far, and we still have one more to go!

The formation of coral here is called spur and groove, when they grow in long lines with sand in between. Sometimes the grooves can be 10 or more meters deep!

In the center, we have the very common, Agaricia agricites, with a soft coral, or gorgonian to the right, and a small Millepora alcicornis just above that, with the white tips...the last is commonly called fire coral, for good reason...it hurts to touch!

In the center of this picture is Eusimilia fastigiana, a flower coral. The yellow stuff to the right is some bleached Montastrea cavernosa.

This is some almost completely bleached Agaricia agricites in a blade formation (called danae) surrounded by some more gorgonians.

Our lovely beach rules! Fairly self explanitory.

A ray!

A sea turtle!

This is the start of the cenote dive...you jump in here, and then explore along a cable, but only along that line...your bubbles will eventually destroy the limestone, so they try to keep the errosion to a confined area.

This is Jax, one of our lovely scholars. She´s from the Isle of Man!

A hermit crab! There´s lots of these underfoot...

A small group shot, when we went kayaking in the lagoon system, next to our base.

When we went on a cenote dive, there were signs like this warning us not to wander too far...

This is our group shot...I´m fourth from the right, in front.

This is our napping area! We spend a lot of time here....

That´s it for now! I hope you enjoyed them! I´ll try to have a few more next week as well...

Week 7...Stupid Sore Throat.

Monday morning I woke up feeling fairly terrible. I dove first thing, at 7:15, but I was feeling even worse by the end of it, and so passed on my second dive. The next day, I woke up even worse, rather like a zombie all day. I had chills and sweats on and off during the day, but felt better by the end, so I thought I might feel better the next day. Nope! Another day of no diving, so I went into town to see a doctor just in case it was the dreaded H1N1. It took me forever to see him, but when I did, he pretty much immediately said it was a throat infection and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics. Total cost for visit and medicine? Under $10. It´s not even worth the hassle to try to claim that from my travel insurance.

When I came back, I really did feel better, so the next day I dove. It was nice to get back in the swing of things. Friday however, ended up being too windy to dive, which I was grateful for, since I was still quite fatigued from being ill. When I dove Saturday, I got all of my creature spots correct! Finally. (The creatures we need to be able to identify are things like sponges, tunicates, crinoids, hydroids, anemones, urchins, many types of algae, and bryozoans) I had just passed my test the day before, so I should be doing some actual monitoring in no time. Hopefully.

Saturday afternoon, I decided I needed a break from base life, and went into town and booked a room for the night (only about $12). I had a lovely dinner, and a lovely shower, and a lovely long talk with people back home, and then went back to the hotel to READ! One of the new five weekers, Morgan, brought with him the latest Wheel of Time book, the 12th so far in the series. The original author, Robert Jordan, died 2 years ago from a rare blood disease, amyloidosis, so they turned the series over to Brian Sanderson, and it turns out he´s done a magnificent job! I wanted to wait to reread the entire series when I got back, and THEN read the latest, but I couldn´t help myself and dove right in as soon as Morgan finished. It was everything I was hoping for in a Wheel of Time book. No one can replace Robert Jordan, but Brian Sanderson did a masterful job taking over the plot, and finally things are happening! To anyone who read some of the series, and stopped due to the plot dragging on, have no fear! The plot is once again moving, and some crazy things start happening, and you definitely can´t put it down once you start.

So it´s been a relaxing weekend. We´ll be having our own little Thanksgiving dinner on base on Thursday which I hope to contribute to! My camera had another run in with a computer, and once again hid all the files on BOTH cards, so I can´t take pictures again. I managed just a couple pictures on this card before that happened, so I need to find out how to get it to let me take pictures again... In the meantime, here´s a few random photos! ....oooooor not! because this computer doesn´t want to upload them for some reason. Why?? Why is there some problem every time I try to do this?? Next week. There will be photos. Techinical difficulties be damned, I will have photos next week. Bah.

Til then, Happy Thanksgiving!!

Week....6? Time flies, and mosquitos are the devil.

It was great to see a bunch of you yesterday at my mom´s birthday party via the webcam! And lovely to hear of course, that you´re enjoying the blog! It´s always lovely to know people actually read this thing...

I can´t believe I´ve only got a month left! I´ll be home four weeks from tomorrow! Looking forward to seeing so many friends and family I´ve missed so much, and yet also looking forward to the remaining time I have here. It´s an odd yet wonderful combination to look at your past, present and future, and be happy about every part of it. I´ve had a wonderful time here, am enjoying every moment, and also can´t wait for what the next four weeks, and the next four months have in store for me. I choose it all! (Thanks JT, for helping me to realize what a gift it is to be able to recognize my choices, and actively choose my paths!)

This week has been particularly wonderful, due to the fact that every single day the weather has been such that I´ve gotten in both of my scheduled dives, bringing my total dive number up to 32! Only 28 more to go...

Speaking of diving, I saw a spotted eagle ray this week, a good 1.4 meters across! A rare and special sighting here at Pez Maya. On the same dive, we also saw a teeny seahorse! It´s absolutey a marvel to see something so....different!...swim around. It´s whole swimming mechanism and body shape is just so unique among the creatures I´ve seen. All in all it was one and a half inches of pure adorableness.

The hurricane left us largely untouched, except for one rather large thing....we have a lagoon system right next to our beach, that closed up nearly a year ago. When we first arrived, there was a sandbar straight across the lagoon exit, which wasn´t so great for the fish, because they often go into the lagoon to lay their eggs, because it´s a more sheltered area for the eggs to hatch. However, after the hurricane, (which highly affected the tide levels for a few days before and after) the lagoon exit opened up, sending tons and tons of freshwater gushing out, into our beach area. What was once crystaline and turquoise is now brackish and murky--a lovely ice tea colored stream that is also colder than seawater. It only takes 10 or 20 meters for the water to return to it´s lovely caribbean color, but it´s still made beach swimming slightly less enjoyable, which is unfortuantely for us, but probably a lot better for the fish. Ah well. Oh, another small thing the hurricane changed.....we are INUNDATED with mosquitos! It was highly manageable before, but now, you can´t take a shower without getting 30 more bites! I literally counted over 100 new bites in a single day. I´m hoping for a tiny increase in wind, and some continued drier and cooler weather to help ward them away again. Otherwise, I might go over the edge. 20 bites on my forehead alone is just not acceptable. The madness must end. Please? Sigh.

My camera is now working! But I haven´t had much of a chance to take more pictures yet, and the computer I´m on doesn´t have a working CD drive, so you´ll unfortunately have to wait one more week for any pictures, but I PROMISE! Next week will have a plethora of lovely pictures to make up for so many weeks without any. So please forgive me, and tune in next weekend for a much more colorful entry! Until then...buenas noches!

5 weeks...half way!

I´ve reached the half way point!

There´s not much to say about diving this week. I only got 2 dives in, because the weather was so terrible. However, on one of those dives, I managed to see an 8 foot Green Moray Eel. Yipe! Instead of diving on Monday, a bunch of us went snorkeling about a kilometer from shore and I saw my first Barracuda, which circled me for a little bit curiously, before finding more interesting things to look at. I also saw my first Ray on that same trip. In addition, I got my second jellyfish sting. This time it was actually teeny jellyfish similar to what they call sea lice. I was repeatedly stung all over my right arm and a bit on my left, as well as my left shoulder, and my left knee. As soon as I finished swimming the kilometer back to shore, I poured vinegar all over myself, but the next day, my arm was on fire with itchiness! I couldn´t stop scratching, and was very nearly driven insane. It took three days and some prescription grade antihystamines to finally control my reaction.

Aside from that, the week was pretty uneventful. We decided to make this our long weekend, to say goodbye to our five weekers (not everyone stays here for 10 full weeks) so I´ve been in Playa Del Carmen since Friday night. I finally got to see my friend Andres´ fire show at the restaurant Fusion, which was great! (I´m not the only fire spinner on base). I also went to this fantastic Cuban restaurant that had a special from 1pm til 6pm, which included a reduction to 1967 prices...which meant my huge meal of three dishes came to about 3 dollars. Overall, it´s been a lovely weekend of souvenir shopping, and hurricane dodging.

Oh, did I mention I just dodged Hurricane Ida? She just passed a few hours ago, northwest of Playa del Carmen. Just a few sprinkles and a bit of breeze. The past few days of normal crappy weather have been much much worse than what this hurricane brought us.

Now I get to go back to base tomorrow to some hopefully more scuba-friendly weather and get more dives in. I´m up to 23 dives, but I need 60 to get my divemaster qualification. Pray to whatever you pray to for good weather for me, please!!

And I´m still trying to get my camera fixed. I promise I´ll have pictures for you as soon as I have a working camera, sigh.

Until next week!

Week 4....already??! what?

So I´ve officially been here a month. It seems like half that, at most. It´s just around the amount of time it takes to start feeling the rhythm of daily life here--the rotation of duties, the fickleness of the weather, the consistancy of the scenery. It´s a pretty good life.

This week was another bad diving week, unfortunately. It was also a bit of a bad luck week. Monday we didn´t dive until the afternoon due to some misplaced keys over the weekend (no emergency transport vehicle=no diving). Tuesday we got one morning dive in before deciding that the seas were getting too rough. Wednesday one of the keys to the boats snapped off, and that took a while to fix. Once that was done, the weather had once again taken a turn for the worse, and diving was cancelled for the rest of the day. Thursday´s waves were just terrible. Friday, the staff tried to appease us by scheduling one dive for each of us, but only my boat got to dive, because the other boat ended up with a bit of engine trouble, and because it was so difficult to tow it back to shore due to the surf, the rest of the dives were cancelled for that day too. Saturday was a torrential downpour like we´ve not yet seen the likes of in the entire four weeks we´ve been here. Thunder, lightning, wind and buckets. It was actually quite a lot of fun running around soaked to the skin, trying to gather as much water runoff from the roof to fill the well (which isn´t used for drinking, no worries...) because the buckets would fill up just about as fast as we could empty them. A lot of us also took advantage of the rain to get an extra shower in this week. It´s an interesting experience to shampoo your hair in the rain...I would recommend it to anyone that has the chance.

So Saturday was a dive washout as well, which means I got a total of 3 dives in this week. However, the week wasn´t entirely a loss despite the terrible wind. We went kayaking in the nearby lagoons, and saw a few splashes that might have been crocodiles. We also started a volleyball tournament, which I didn´t do too badly in, if I say so myself. My team won the first game 15-3). I also asked our resident fixer upper, Greg, if he might install a pullup bar for the girls, since the one for the guys is ridiculously high up, which he nicely did. So, in addition to heaving around air tanks, hauling myself out of the water into the boats, pushing the boats in and out of the water, and carrying other random scuba and boat supplies all the time, I can now also pull myself up and down a piece of driftwood during my free time. :)

That´s about it for this past week. Most EM´s left for Playa Del Carmen yesterday to party it up for the weekend. I gladly stayed here, to enjoy the calm of a base with only 9 people. The staff cooked dinner for us last night, as they do every Saturday night, and they definitely made my weekend by grilling bacon cheeseburgers with curried potatoes, coleslaw and guacamole. I´m fairly certain I was in ecstasy during the whole meal. I popped open a cheap bottle of champagne near midnight, and celebrated with the two EM´s still awake, the culmination of my 26th year on this lovely planet. Today, in about an hour, I get to go cavern diving in a nearby pair of cenotes called Dos Ojos, which promises to be fairly spectacular. I´ll give you a rundown of how that goes next week!