Pez Maya, Mexico

Thought I`d do the update a bit different this time seeing as I can`t really update you on where I have been and what I have been doing is pretty similar each day. I thought I would start by giving you an update on my diving status (I am getting good!!), then giving you an idea of my average day out here in Pez.

So I am just finishing my PADI Advanced Open Water Course. I have been on 5 adventure dives for that. They were Underwater Naturalist where we looked at fish and coral and underwater animals, Underwater Navigation where we were shown how to use an underwater cumpas, then we did The Deep Dive which was really really cool, where we went down to 30m to see if we got nitrogen narcosis (which is like being drunk) but i didn`t get it :(, we also did a boat dive (but every dive is a boat dive), and we then did Peak Performance Boyancy (which is about floating underwater) whwere we swum through hoops and did an egg and spoon race typy thing and floated with our heads down. The whole course was really really cool and good fun (appart from when i was sea sick), I still ahve to do the exam but appart from that am all set to start doing reef serveying (which is what i am here to do after all).

As for a day in the life of, well Monday to Friday we get up at about 6:00am and do chores, we do chores per hut and they are on a four day rotation so we have kitchen (which is all the cooking), grounds (racking and tolet cleaning), boat (getting the boat stuff togetehr and checking it and filling the gear wash bins with clean water) and comunual (cleaning the comunual area, sweeping, wiping tables etc.). At 6:30 we have breakfast (obviously the breakfast people usually get up before 6:00), at 7:00 we have boat push where we push the baots into the water and then at 7:30 the first two dives go out, the next two go out at 9:00 and then lunch is at 11:30 after lunch we have four more dives, two at 12:30 and two at 14:00. Usually this doesn`t all go to schedule but most people will be on one or two dives every day. We then have dinner at 18:30 and go to bed when ever we please, which is usually early. Saturday we have a fun dive in the morning and then have the afternoon off, staff cook dinner and we have a Pez Party Night, Sunday is a day off - suposedly this is to recover from diving (to get rid of the nitrogen in the boady) but for most people this ends up being to get over the drinking form the night before!!

Not everything is going to plan currently, the compresser is boken again (the thing we fill the scub tanks with) and one of our boats is also broken meaning we can only put one dive out at once so we are not all getting as many dives as usual. There is also a lot of bad weather as it is winter here and all in all I have only done 12 dives in the 3 weeks I have been here. Hopefully it will get better though, 12 dives is still a reasonible amount and i am still having fun, and learning new stuff. Have passed my fish test as I might have meantion before and now need to do underwater tests and do the fish juviniles. But have also been doing a lot of relaxing and reading, so I have been enjoying myself - it is not all work. I also had my first thanksgiving last Thursday!! We cooked (or i should say got cooked) a full thanksgiving meal, not completly authentic but it was still great and we got meat middweak which never happends as we dont have refrigeration (due to the lack of electricity) we normally only have meat on a saturday so this was a real treat!!